Reasons to Go On
by Zea T
Summary: Grieving his lost bondmate, Prowl is faced with harder choices than most – these do not become easier when Sideswipe and Sunstreaker encounter a difficult situation of their own.
1. Introduction

Title: **Reasons to Go On**

Author: zea_taylor

'verse: 2007 Movieverse

Rating: T

Characters: Prowl, Sideswipe, Optimus Prime, William Lennox, ensemble

Warnings: Angst, Prowl/Jazz, post-2007 movie, mild language

Summary: _Grieving his lost bondmate, Prowl is faced with harder choices than most – these do not become easier when Sideswipe and Sunstreaker encounter a difficult situation of their own._

Author's Note: _This is a story that refused to die, no matter how long I neglected it for._ _I think somehow I created two different plots colliding head on, but hope I've ended up with something coherent. I've also figured out I can't write decent endings, and was never sure at what point to call this done. It's certainly been a long time (about 4 years!) from first words to posting, and I'm planning to write other stories and snippets in this 'verse continuing the story afterwards. It's actually set post-RotF (since that's when I started writing it). I dithered over making it DotM-compatible, and decided not to. I'm planning to update fairly frequently – maybe once a week. Comments and constructive criticisms are always welcome._

* * *

**Prologue**

He ran into the system's heliopause like an alt mode into solid steel. To any other Cybertronian, the ripple of flux from so small a yellow sun would scarcely register. The whisper of it against the crust of their cometary shells was the slightest of sensations – a relief, if it was noticed at all.

It struck him like a million needle-sharp vibroknives.

His systems fired before he gave them conscious thought, checking his motion, bringing him to rest relative to the distant primary.

He ached from plating to struts. His spark strained, faltering in his frame. He felt the fluctuations within it and then, terrifyingly, the flutters against it. He needed Ratchet's help, and the security of standing by his Prime's side. He knew that. He'd travelled halfway across the galaxy to see it happen.

But he couldn't do this.

This was the system where Jazz had died, where the AllSpark had burned into nothing. Even being here, knowing the blue-green planet lay ahead, was painful and more difficult than he'd expected. He felt ill, hurting anew, grieved to the depth of his spark.

Even in his distress, his training held. He decoded Prime's briefing beacon in microseconds, and intercepted its broadcast before it could betray his presence. He needed time to think, to decide on his path before the decision was taken from him.

Maybe it was his exhaustion, or the shock of the moment, that made him careless. Maybe it was just that the twins had got sneakier since he last encountered them. If he'd known they were here, he might have been more wary. Sideswipe had learnt to be sneaky from the master; Jazz's partner in crime in a dozen escapades. It wasn't unusual for the front-liner to set a beacon of his own, to get the scoop on new arrivals and take advantage of the foreknowledge.

Stumbling across it was an act of carelessness that told all too clearly how badly this particular newcomer was off form.

The query that came from the twins was startled, wary, and tightly shielded.

He answered it with a sharp order, as narrowly focused and encrypted as the signal had been: Say nothing. Wait.

He needed to know he could do this. He needed to be certain that it was the right decision.

His spark throbbed again, straining. Would time to think help? He couldn't be sure.

Just now though, it was all he had.

* * *

They travelled to the lookout in silence.

Even when they reached the shoreline and the wind-blown bluffs, there was little to say. Sideswipe didn't take the time to change out of his alt mode, hurrying to transmit the tightly-coded and focused databurst they'd prepared. His twin brother waited by his side, a low, impatient throb of his engine breaking the stillness between them.

Neither wanted to be here. Even if the vibrant yellow and red shells of the two Stingray Corvettes hadn't been so painfully out of place against the wild disorder of this corner of an organic world, their actions would have been. It felt wrong to be sneaking around behind the backs of their fellow Autobots and human allies. Doing what they were doing without telling Optimus Prime went beyond simply wrong.

"He's not going to answer."

Sideswipe shrugged, the motion translated into a slight bounce of his alt-mode's suspension. He couldn't honestly argue with his brother's statement, and he could say nothing to alleviate the concern that was so obvious to him even if hidden from anyone else. He tried nonetheless, forcing more cheer and confidence into his voice than he felt.

"He will. Sooner or later. He can't keep this up forever."

Sunstreaker couldn't stifle the frustrated whirring of his vents. The sound was whipped away by the gusting sea breeze, but neither he nor his twin brother needed mere sound vibrations to communicate, or to feel one another's uncertainty. "Nor can we."

Sideswipe echoed his brother's sigh. Usually they'd treat something like this as a challenge, entertaining themselves with speculation on what would finally get a rise out of their target and what might come of it. Not now. Not about this.

"It's been a week," he admitted. "Maybe… Sunny, maybe we should go to Prime."

He half-expected Sunstreaker to jump on the idea. It was the right thing to do, they both knew that. But on another level, they were almost certain it was their worst possible course through this quagmire of loyalty, fragile trust and spark-deep pain.

The yellow Corvette backed away from the cliff-edge, his wheels slipping a little on the rain-slicked grass. A rock scraped Sunstreaker's road-hugging undercarriage with a metallic shriek that made both mechs wince. Sideswipe braced for an explosion of irritation. Instead, his brother merely muttered a curse and gunned his engine.

"We'll give him an orn," he grunted. "Then he's Optimus's problem. I'm going into town."

Sideswipe didn't remind him to be careful or ask him to hurry home, knowing better than to test his twin's uneven temper after these last seven days. The sentiments were there between them nonetheless, their bond ringing with an eloquent silence. It lingered, as Sideswipe himself lingered, waiting on the lookout for five long breems before resigning himself to the fact that no reply would come. Only then did the red Corvette Stingray slip into reverse, manoeuvring carefully back from the edge and watching for stones amongst the long grass. He hesitated when he reached the road, his headlights casting a soft glow against the gathering twilight. His front grill turned briefly southwards, his optics refocusing on the downtown high-rises barely visible on the horizon.

Sunny was out there somewhere, thinking hard, and perhaps even gathering material for another secret artwork, the meaning of which hovered just beyond Sides' grasp. As glad as Sideswipe was to see Sunstreaker reaching out for those old skills, he wished he could understand why he had. His brother had been unhappy since they first heard Prime calling them to Earth. This latest dilemma, bad as it was, had merely been what the native organics would call 'the icing on the cake'. Wherever Sunny was going with his art, whatever he was striving to make sense of, Sides was at a loss to help.

Sideswipe paused, engine revving. Whether or not creative inspiration had struck this evening, his twin wouldn't appreciate Sideswipe interrupting his nightly brooding session. With a sigh the red-clad warrior put his game face on and turned his headlights northwards instead, chasing their bright beams back towards NEST's forward base. It was time for Sideswipe to reach for his own creative outlet. Time to bring a ray of sunshine into the long evening ahead of his friends and colleagues.

Sideswipe's brief attempt at artificial good humour faded. His eyes strayed upwards, picking out the first stars against the gathering darkness.

There were two dozen mechs on the base, most of them long-missed comrades. Still more of his friends were still out there… somewhere. Deep inside, Sideswipe knew he wouldn't rest easy until the Autobots he loved and respected most were here, safe and reunited with their Prime... all of them.


	2. Part One

It was a bad part of town. Even with the cultural divide stretched out like a chasm in front of him, Sunstreaker could tell that. He'd been dragged through enough sleazy dives over the vorns for him to look past the veneer of this organic world and compare it to a thousand others. It didn't take a genius to recognise the interfacing parlours and the bars that offered nothing more than the pursuit of total intoxication.

Optimus Prime would probably ground his soldiers indefinitely if he ever found out they'd been here. Ratchet would shake his head, baffled and bemused by the vagaries of organics. Ironhide would rotate and charge his cannons, associating this level of debauchery and low-level criminality with humanity's sometimes disconcerting Decepticon aspect.

Sides liked this part of town though; that much had been obvious the first time Sunstreaker's brother brought him here. It appealed to the red-clad twin's vibrant personality, and reminded him of better times in far away places. Only Prime's orders, based on human demands for secrecy, kept Sideswipe from joining the crowd and experimenting with the experiences this place offered.

Given that frustrating constraint, Sideswipe has been confused by Sunny's decision to return, time and again, to the same-run down multi-storey parking ramp. At most they could park, as Sunstreaker was doing now, in their vehicular forms - looking down on the humans from the vantage point of a barren parking slot. Sides had never been one to watch from the sidelines. After their first visit he'd turned away, regretful, but content to return to NEST and the society of their Autobot comrades. It wasn't until the third time Sunstreaker slipped away during his off-duty hours, and Sideswipe had pushed a little to get a feel of his brother's ambivalent emotions through their spark-bond, that the red-clad twin had started to understand. Now of all times, with both of them worried and uncertain what to do for the best, Sides would know where to find him. And know, too, not to try.

Sunstreaker cycled air through his engine intakes. He shared so much with his brother: his upbringing, his commitment to the Autobot cause, the Corvette Stingray chassis that he wore in his own distinctive colour... half his very spark. He didn't share Sideswipe's indiscriminate attraction to other people, his ability to focus on the moment, or the ease with which Sides could put their eternity of conflict behind them and relax.

For Sunstreaker, the world was one of patterns and shapes, difficult memories and broken promises. When he looked down on the swirling mass of humanity, he saw streaks of light and colour, ever changing, vibrant with the promise of new life. Humanity was a young race. Short-lived. Even in the heights of depravity, they were celebrating the sparks within them, and the simple fact that they were alive. There was a dizzy innocence to it. Not a single person strolling down the still-thronged street market, rolling between bars or exploring the promise of more exotic entertainments, was plagued with the memories of a lifetime at war. Not one of them could imagine a single event that would change humanity's meaning forever… the way the Autobots and Decepticons both had been changed.

Watching them, Sunny could almost forget that he was now part of Cybertron's last generation.

Sides had taken the realisation in his stride, pointing out that neither of them had ever expected to procreate, or even to survive the war. Sunstreaker couldn't do that. He'd let the conversation drop, diverting his brother rather than trying to find the words to explain to him. Sideswipe had allowed the change of the subject, but not without a sidelong glance. He knew his brother was unsettled, even if Sunstreaker himself had no words for his feelings.

The destruction of the All-Spark had shaken him more than he wanted to admit.

Okay, so it had never played heavily on his mind, but always before, he'd believed he was fighting for the fate of his race - for the sparklings of generations to come. He'd watched cities fall, and friends return to the Matrix before their time – a constant reminder of the dangers of letting anyone but Sideswipe past his spark's solid defences. Despite that a precious few mechs had somehow managed to infiltrate his armour. The death of his commander and kind-of-friend Jazz, just three years before, was still a ragged wound, raw even without their current concerns. That was just the latest loss amongst many. As much as it had hurt over the vorns – all of it, and so, so deeply – Sunstreaker had taken the pain without complaint, knowing that this ordeal couldn't last forever. He had no illusions about the type of world that would follow unless he and others like him were prepared to fight for it. He'd resigned himself and his twin brother to a lifetime of suffering and loss, at least in part, for the sake of a future he never expected to see.

Now that future was gone.

Sunstreaker couldn't imagine backing out now, stepping back from the fight or letting Megatron's evil whims rule unchallenged. He'd see this through. But he couldn't silence the quiet voice that told him here, on this organic world and at the hands of its ever-astonishing natives – their long ordeal had become war for war's own sake.

That was what drew him back here, to the ephemeral, organic humans. That was why he'd let his artistic side, limited to a certain pride in his appearance for so many vorns, re-emerge. If he lost himself in the colour and light, in the sound and the movement and the beautiful vibrancy of the place, he could persuade himself that perhaps there was something still worth fighting for in this broken universe. He could find a reason to go on. And, just maybe, he could forget that the thronging life below was something he and his kind no longer shared.

* * *

Sunk deep in thought, watching fascinated as the lights from the human vehicles were distorted into streaks by his slow-cycling optics, Sunstreaker was hardly aware of the humans gathering around him.

The first three had been an irrelevance, their interest in him unsurprising. The few vehicles parked around him in the ramp at this time of night were sorry, drab and run-down things. For the most part their bodywork was dented and rusted, having seen the light of better days. Even those few that seemed well maintained had been forced into servitude for far too long, their engines tired and worn. Not even the best of them could match Sunstreaker's alt-form for style. At their best, none would match the Corvette Stingray for basic quality. Beside his glowing yellow shell, his neighbours looked drab and tawdry. He didn't doubt that his presence was worth an audience. And if these teenage boys had come to stare at him for four days in the last five? Well, he didn't blame them.

Even so, the arrival of a fourth and fifth human surprised him a little. They were older than the first three, with hair pulled back from their faces in tight ponytails and dressed in leathers similar enough that they could almost be some kind of tribal uniform. They strolled up to the youths with a cocky confidence that reminded Sunstreaker of himself and Sideswipe. Like the twins, these two carried an air of suppressed violence about them, an imminent threat. Sunstreaker refocused his attention with the instincts of a trained warrior, wary as he assessed the newcomers.

Despite his instinctive reaction to them, there was little either could do to him. A little leather and steel might intimidate their fellow humans, but Sunstreaker was made of sterner stuff. At need he could, and would, transform into the giant robot form that would send these macho men running, tears streaking their faces, and still less pleasant fluids dampening their pants. The thought brought a certain amount of satisfaction to Sunstreaker's battle-hardened spark. He'd take Pit-slag from Prime for it, so perhaps the option was best avoided, but simply picturing the possibility gave him a warm glow.

He watched with more interest than genuine concern as the two swaggered up to the human adolescents, whistling through their teeth.

"Well, kiddos, I've got to hand it to you. Wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't've seen it for myself."

The first man stopped, looking back at Sunstreaker with frankly admiring eyes. His partner leaned against the old 4x4 in the next bay along, kicking idly at its tyre with one foot.

"Who the hell would leave a beauty like that alone in a place like this?"

"I'm telling you, man." That was one of the teenagers, shaking his head and running a hand through hair slicked and pulled back in imitation of his elders'. "Every day for near a week. Same spot every time. Never seen the guy, but he sure ain't got a lick of sense."

"He won't be back any time soon?" The two elder men were drifting closer now, walking around Sunstreaker to inspect his chassis with whistles and sighs of admiration. One of them glanced back at the loitering teenagers, clearly expecting an answer.

"The 'vette's been here till dawn the last three days. No one's coming for this beauty. Either he doesn't care, or he's got a hell of a good security system."

Interested, and more than a little smug, Sunstreaker checked the strength of his door locks, and the system that would electrify his shell at need. Prime had looked a little askance at that last one, but surprisingly Lennox and his people had been as keen on it as the twins. Apparently car theft was a big enough issue in the local cities that no one wanted the red tape of dealing with a 'stolen' Autobot. Although, Sunstreaker realised with a tinge of sorrow, there was at least one mech in the system who might appreciate seeing a good write-up on one of the twins… and Sunstreaker would give a lot to see a smile on that mech's face.

Smirking sadly to himself, he dialled up the volume of his alarm system's siren, ready to let rip at the least provocation. Prime might have a problem with his Autobots frightening humans to incontinence, but not even Optimus would blame Sunstreaker for making use of a human-analogue burglar alarm.

He almost let loose a mere moment after the thought. The oldest of the five men, marked out by his grey-streaked hair, touched Sunstreaker's hood. Greasy fingerprints marred a previously-immaculate waxed finish, sending a shudder through his rigid frame. It was bad enough that he already had a scratch to buff out of his undertray before his next shift. Now it looked like a visit to the wash-racks was going to be in order. Snarling in the silence of his own thoughts, it took every ounce of control Sunstreaker had not to back out from under that somehow-covetous touch. He hesitated for a long second before deciding that a single brush of thick, insensitive fingers wasn't worth causing a scene that would cost him this vantage point. He held his silence, waiting for the man's intentions to become clear.

It didn't take long.

The second youth, silent until now, folded his arms.

"Well, man? We got a deal?" He jerked his head over his shoulder, indicating the down ramp. "Ya got the truck outside already, right?"

It wasn't until the eldest man smiled a grim smile, looking down and nodding at his partner, that Sunstreaker realised the touch had distracted him from the second mature human. He sent out a scan pulse in a hurry, only now noticing the leather-clad man crouching by his side. He reached for his alarm systems with sudden concern, distracted for a few moments as Sideswipe reacted to his alarm with an urgent query. Those moments were all he had.

The device wasn't intended to do the vehicle any permanent harm. At its worst, it was designed to knock out a top-end car's computer-controlled, anti-burglar and locator capabilities. There was no way these humans could know what their computer-killer would do to Cybertronian systems. The compact box, no larger than a cigarette packet, was cold against Sunstreaker's undertray, magnets snapping it into place with a sensation like an ice-cube dropped into a human's collar. Sunstreaker recognised the discomfort for the briefest of instants.

Then the waves of pain hit him. Electromagnetic pulses scrambled his processors and fired every sensor in his frame. Agony rippled through Sunstreaker's flaring spark, his very thoughts broken up before they could achieve coherence. He didn't feel the coarse tarpaulin fall heavily across his shell, or of the winch that gathered him up onto a low-sitting tow truck. He'd long since lost awareness of his surroundings… lost all connection with the outside world. Consciousness didn't so much flee as yield, surrendering to the onslaught and plunging him into deep darkness.

* * *

There were sights that no one in the cosmos ever expected to see. Human versus Autobot basketball – ten on three – had to rank up there on the list.

The Autobots technically had the height advantage, the tallest of their human opponents barely coming up to their mid shin strut. In this game though, that might well be more of a hindrance than a help. Sideswipe, Ironhide and Jolt had fought at one another's sides long enough for civilisations to rise and fall. They each had an instinctive knowledge of where they should be, and where they'd find their teammates. They passed the ball between them with impressive skill. What confounded their attempts to score were the delicate nature of the human ball (burst basketballs were counted as a foul against the offending team), the precision needed to get the miniscule leather bladder through a hoop they had to lean down to see, and the sheer unpredictability of the equally delicate human players around them. No Autobot was at their most graceful when trying to keep a double handful of fast-moving organics in sight, while simultaneously trying not to squish them with a careless step (if for no other reason than that would be a game-ending foul too).

The basic objective of the hybrid game was unchanged – to score as many baskets as possible. The detailed rules, allowed team compositions and game length had evolved over many months of collaborative effort. Leaning back against the hangar wall, dilating his optics to better observe the floodlit concrete apron on which his mechs were playing, Optimus Prime felt a certain amount of contentment. Thrashing out a rulebook that didn't bring human and Autobot to blows had been one of NESTs more satisfying joint operations.

Leaning against Prime's leg, arms folded across his chest, Major Lennox seemed to feel the same.

"Hey, your boys are getting pretty good," Lennox drawled, with a deliberately irritating edge of condescension. "Might just have to see what the book is up to on them actually winning one of these days."

Prime inclined his head, in acknowledgement, but not in agreement. "Sunstreaker, Mudflap and Ratchet are still the better team," he observed in a mild rumble.

Lennox whistled through his teeth. "Yeah. Wouldn't have guessed. Put the three least sociable mechs on Earth together… well, it doesn't sound like it would work out well."

Prime chuckled, low and deep. "Sunstreaker has felt Ratchet's wrench too often to tune our medic out as he does others. And young Mudflap is in awe off them both."

There was a scatter of applause from the off-duty NEST soldiers watching the game, and the few Autobots on the sidelines – Mudflap and Skids amongst them. Roped into refereeing the Sideswipe-inspired pick-up game on one of his occasional visits back to Base, Bumblebee acknowledged the point for the human team. He wasn't the only one to shoot Lennox a grin when the major whistled enthusiastically in support of his men. Lennox sighed and subsided, leaning back against Prime's leg as play went on.

"So tell me, Optimus: if you had to put together three 'bots in a dream team who would they be?"

A quick interrogation of the Base data-network uncovered an explanation of the term, clarifying Lennox's question for his alien ally. It was an interesting concept. Prime pondered it for a few seconds, weighing the strengths and weaknesses of his Autobots in his processor and trying to project their shared aptitude for this complex precision sport. He was unsurprised to discover that his instinctive first answer held up to several thousand cycles of simulation and probability analysis. His optics dimmed a little as memory caught up with instinct. Lennox had asked about a fantasy team. Prime's answer was that taken to its extreme.

"Sideswipe and Sunstreaker," he said firmly, before letting his voice soften to a murmur. "And Jazz."

Lennox stiffened, pushing away from Prime and taking a few steps forward before turning to peer up at the Autobot leader. It wasn't often any of the 'bots mentioned their fallen comrade. He sometimes forgot that to them the three years since Jazz returned to the Matrix was barely the blink of an eye… or cycle of an optic. Lennox swallowed hard, glancing up at Prime's neutral expression without pity but with a soldier's grim acknowledgement of loss and the pain it carried. He tilted his head and went with the suggestion.

"That's three big personalities on a small court. You don't think they'd get in each other's way?"

"Sunstreaker and Sideswipe would never hinder one another unless they did so deliberately. And Jazz… in battle, he was adaptable enough to complement any team with grace and danger personified."

There was another moment of silence before Lennox sighed. "Wish I'd been there to see it," he said finally, leaning back against his ally's big metal legs. "I sometimes forget there was so much before Earth for you guys… forget just how long you've been fighting this war."

"Long years… though it has cost us valued companions… friends." Prime's voice had dropped to a low rumble, his optics dim as they followed Sideswipe passing the ball to Ironhide before reclaiming it moments later. "I apologise for troubling you. Jazz was on my processor for other reasons." He vented softly, the breeze ruffling his companion's short hair. "Many of my warriors still roam the stars, William Lennox, but there are many more that linger only in cherished memory."

The conversation was getting maudlin and they both knew it. Lennox wasn't looking up at his leaning post any longer, honestly not sure whether he had the strength to meet Optimus Prime's ageless and far too expressive optics. Prime kept his gaze fixed on the game in any case, not willing to burden his human counterpart with the weight of Cybertron's tragic past, or the many fears he held for the warriors yet to answer his call. He forced thoughts of his lost soldiers away with a physical shudder that earned him another sidelong glance from Lennox.

"However, I fear I have 'cheated'. A team comprising Sideswipe and Sunstreaker does not satisfy the rules of this activity."

It was the right thing to say. Lennox managed a laugh that sounded halfway convincing. "Hey, splitting twins between teams is one you 'bots insisted on, not us."

Now Prime allowed a hint of humour in expression, easily read despite his battle mask. The two exchanged a look before both turned back to watch the competition.

"Indeed. I fear rivalry is strong even amongst my Autobots. A team that utilised the deep knowledge and instinctive collaboration of a twin bond would be - "

Prime's voice cut off, a frown forming on his face. Sideswipe had retaken the ball after the Autobot team's last basket, snatching it from his human opposite in mid-court. He was bouncing it with care, his optics searching out Jolt, when the red-armoured warrior paused. His head turned south and east as if on a string, and a startled expression appeared on his face. A moment later it was replaced by a scowl. Sideswipe's wrist-blades slid out in a blaze of energy, the ball bouncing waist high unheeded before falling back into the hands of his surprised opponents. The front-liner started to move, paying no attention to the shouts of the humans around him. And then, quite suddenly, he wasn't paying attention to anything any more.

The humans on the opposing team, reaching barely past ankle height on Sideswipe and almost directly below him, weren't in any position to see the soft blue glow in his optics blink out with alarming abruptness. It was only Ironhide's quick slide and grab that snatched two of them to safety, and cries rang out when Jolt, on the other side of the court, summoned his electro-whips. Three more humans were tangled and jerked backwards, the painful shocks they received cast into insignificance moments later by the tremendous impact of Sideswipe's armoured form against the concrete where they'd stood.

Lennox was up and running in a moment, Prime already striding over and past him. They weren't alone. The shout rose from a dozen Autobot voices – both verbally and over their internal comms.

"Ratchet!"

The Autobot medic took longer than anyone wanted to get there, racing back across the airfield from his perimeter patrol. Lennox had time to get to the side of his own shocked men, checking on the superficial burns left by Jolt's whip and scanning pale faces with a practiced eye, before the search and rescue hummer roared through the milling crowd, sirens blazing. Ratchet transformed at his patient's side, his servos gripping the insensate mech as his gruff voice called Sideswipe's name.

"Turn him over," Ratchet snapped, not looking up. Prime obeyed, rolling his warrior carefully as the medic's hand steadied Sideswipe's helm. No touch could be careful enough to satisfy Ratchet's intense scrutiny. "Gently, Optimus! I don't know what caused this yet."

A second set of sirens and this time it was a more conventional base ambulance arriving on the scene. Lennox left the human players, all more concerned for their fallen opponent than themselves, in the capable hands of his own medics. He frowned up at Ratchet instead, trying to see past the bulk of Sideswipe's vibrant red armour to what the medic was doing. Optimus could see, but seeing told him little. An alarmingly steady stream of mumbled profanity poured from Ratchet's vocaliser as he passed his hands over Sideswipe's body, scanning it. Even without a clear report, that was enough to make the Prime tense. Lennox had seen Ratchet this perturbed only a few times before, but even he had clearly realised it wasn't a good sign. The medic's playful displays of temper on chasing malingering Autobots out of his medbay were one thing, this torrent of vehement profanity and muttered instructions to the unconscious Sideswipe, stopping only just short of a plea to snap out of it, was quite another. It carried a tense edge that put both of NEST's joint commanders on guard.

Ironhide recognised it too. The big, black mech was watching Ratchet fuss with arms crossed across his chest and a grim look.

"This doesn't make sense, Optimus. And you know what makes even less?" Prime's weapons officer looked pointedly around at the assembled mechs as if looking for someone in particular.

Optimus frowned at his friend for a moment before his optics brightened in realisation. He raised his voice, looking around. "Sunstreaker?" Prime said aloud. His optics scanned the crowd and when he spoke again, it was via the com channel, echoing through human radio sets and into Lennox's earpiece. _"Sunstreaker. Report!"_

Lennox scowled, unimpressed. Both twins had been known to turn their radios off while not on-duty, particularly if they intended to sneak off-base. In theory, there was no reason to assume Sunstreaker's silence was in any way a cause for concern, but Prime knew his expression and rigid posture said otherwise. Even Lennox had to admit the timing was bad. This was escalating far too fast for anyone's liking. The major's hand went to his earpiece, tapping at the radio he habitually wore on base, even when not on duty.

"All perimeter positions check in!" The human had no idea what had dropped Sideswipe. It had looked like some kind of internal collapse, but for all Lennox knew, this was the result of some long-range weapon beyond Earth's technology and merely a distraction before the main attack. There'd been that strange, alarmed expression on Sideswipe's face, that sudden look towards the south-east. Towards Mission City, in fact. To Optimus Prime the inference was obvious. It took his human counterpart a little longer. Lennox turned in that direction, his surprised eyes following a long dust trail as the gate guard down there reported the approach of Bumblebee and Jolt, two of the Autobots' fastest scouts, steadily increasing the gap back to where Ironhide rolled out solidly behind them.

"_Let them through." _Prime spoke over the radio before Lennox could turn to ask the question. Lennox turned back, ready to shout up at Prime for the lack of consultation or at the very least demand an explanation. His voice died in his throat. Commed instructions from Ratchet streaming through his processor, Prime had already bent down to gather up his fallen warrior. Sideswipe hung limp in his leader's arms. Ratchet hovered beside them, a cable extending from his wrist and plugged directly into a socket in the side of Sideswipe's neck. The medic's frown of concentration changed into a frustrated snarl.

"Damn it to the Pit and back, Prime! They have to find him. Now!"

Prime eyed his friend with concern, trying to hide it but aware that even Major Lennox had started to recognise the way his optics irised wider. The human frowned as Prime's deep voice rose, asking a question as much of the humans on the base as his fellow Autobots.

"If any individual is aware of Sunstreaker's intended destination this evening, or can narrow his current location down further that merely 'off base', Bumblebee urgently requires that information."

Total silence met his words. Most of NEST's human personnel looked nonplussed by the urgent inquiry. The other Autobots were sombre but unable to help. They'd have spoken out long before if they could. Lennox crossed his arms across his chest, holding his tongue in the face of the emergency. The major had likely assumed Prime was dispatching his weapons-master and scouts to confront a threat, or to act as glorified messenger boys. In human terms, there was no way to explain the urgency. As far as Lennox knew, tracking Sunstreaker down and letting Sideswipe's twin brother know he was ill was probably the right thing to do. Prime's true motive would simply never occur to his counterpart.

"Slag it." Ratchet snapped the cable back into his wrist, his hand brushing Sideswipe's face with a touch far gentler than his words. "Twins! Why in Primus' name did he have to curse us with twins! Optimus, we've got to get him to my medical bay, but we need Sunstreaker back here. I can stabilise this one's systems, for now at least, but it's not Sideswipe I need to treat."

The angry words sent a chill through everyone within hearing, the first hints of understanding dawning on the human faces surrounding them. Ratchet's voice carried back as both mechs began to stride away, Sideswipe still cradled in his Prime's arms.

"Whatever this is, it's bad, Prime. Very bad. If Sunny doesn't get help soon, we could lose them both."


	3. Part Two

"Prime… I'm sorry."

Bumblebee was grimy, caked in the pollution of a human city, dim optics betraying his low energy levels. The small yellow Autobot rubbed one fist across his optics, a gesture acquired from his human friend that did more to smear the accumulated road dust than clear it. Bumblebee was using his voice, the words ringing out across the unusually quiet hanger despite his soft tones. This was too serious a matter to trivialise with his usual radio clips and non-vocal chirps.

"Jolt and I were searching for hours and we barely got anywhere. We just don't know where to start!"

'Hours' was an understatement. It was almost twenty hours since Sideswipe collapsed from the shock of his brother's trauma, and Bumblebee had only now rolled back to Base on weary wheels. The sun was already well past its zenith, falling towards the western horizon. The usual business of NEST, the training drills, investigations of UFOs in the rural Mid-West, reports of strange activity in Europe, all had been put aside by a matter of far greater urgency. On the tarmac, the human soldiers of NEST worked through readiness exercises, still in a state of high alert. Here in the hangar, humans and Autobots worked side by side, poring over maps and satellite imaging. Others had replaced the scouts, refusing to surrender to the futility of attempting to search a vast, vibrant city for a single missing vehicle.

A highway camera just outside Mission City had confirmed they were looking in the right direction, but after that the trail went cold. Civil liberties, the right to privacy… the words sounded good, but they equated to no city funding for traffic light cameras, no CCTV permitted to overlook the street to any significant degree. The all-seeing cameras they were forced to avoid on visits to, say, Europe, would have been a godsend in finding Prime's lost warrior. It would help if they had so much as a vague area to start from, but Sunstreaker was notoriously close-mouthed about his downtime, and Ironhide's search of the twins' quarters, with Mudflap to aid in exploring the more confined corners, had revealed no clue as to his activities. There was no evidence they could find to narrow the search, nothing for Prime to do but wait, and comfort his Autobots with each report of failure.

Prime didn't move from where he stood beside NEST's main command and control gantry. He didn't rub at his brow or imitate the human gestures so many of his soldiers had started to adopt. Only the bright glow of his optics and the whirr of his engine vents, hitching in the Cybertronian equivalent of a sigh, gave any indication that he was a living, sentient being rather than some colossal sculpture. He was aware that his stillness was having a disconcerting effect on the humans around him. It was also providing his own soldiers with the reassuring solidity they deeply needed. A curious paradox. It was at times like this, when he was at his most weary and concerned, at his most _human_, that he also felt the most alien.

"You've done well, Bumblebee. You may rest and recharge before returning to your duties tomorrow. I am sure Sam will be glad to see you."

The young scout's shoulders slumped, his faintly-glowing optics falling to the swept-concrete floor.

"Not well enough. Sir, I'd like to stay…"

Prime tilted his head, optics brightening a little in surprise. "Taking Sunstreaker was not the act of a demoralised enemy. I am wary of what this suggests of Decepticon strategy. And if our newly emboldened foes decide to strike at Sam in your absence…?"

Bumblebee didn't try to hide his unhappy whine. Rationally he knew as well as Optimus did that Tracks – not long since arrived on Earth – was a competent if occasionally infuriating stand-in as Sam's guardian. That didn't stop the small yellow scout fretting through every visit to Base. Even so, he shook his head, glancing upwards and into his Prime's face.

"Sam…. I don't think..." The scout hesitated, taking the time to reset his vocaliser as he struggled to articulate his misgivings. "We found no trace of Sunny, Optimus. That just doesn't make sense."

On the gantry beside them, Sergeant Epps kicked his chair back from the monitor, the human rubbing a hand across his creased brow. The soldier frowned, unabashed by his eavesdropping.

"Bee's not wrong. Honest truth? I thought we'd hear about the battle long before anyone got to the city limits."

This time the cycling of Prime's engine vents was louder and deeper. "The same thought has been troubling me. Sunstreaker is one of our most able frontline warriors. He would not have been quickly or quietly subdued."

"Not to mention that one giant robot carting another around tends to get noticed… even in Mission City." Lennox hauled himself up onto the gantry and dropped into a chair beside Epps with a tired grunt. He ran a hand back through short brown hair, shrugging his shoulders as if he could shake off the exhaustion weighing them down. "I hate to say it, Prime, but I'm not convinced this was the Decepticons."

This time the sound rumbling deep in Prime's chest was less of a sigh than a growl. Despite his outward calm, he could feel his frustration growing. Even so, he took the time to consider Lennox's words, and the sombre looks both Epps and Bumblebee were directing toward him.

If not the Decepticons, then… He'd never hesitated to recognise the potential of these humans. Bumblebee's capture by one of their more organised subgroups, not to mention Megatron's confinement, had taught the Autobots that the small creatures were far from toothless. Even so… Megatron had been stasis locked when taken, and Bumblebee more concerned with Sam's safety and his commander's orders. Neither circumstance applied in Sunstreaker's case. Optics shadowed with concern and uncertainty, Optimus folded his arms across his chest-plates and leaned forward to study his human counterpart more closely.

"Whom do you suspect?"

He didn't show it but his spark fell as his gaze was met by two pairs of human eyes that held only matching frustration and concern… no answers.

Epps slumped back in his chair, rotating it to glance back at the screen. He shook his head. "We sure those Sector Seven assholes are out of the picture for this?"

"Frag, yeah." Lennox threw out the Cybertronian curse without hesitation, his tone vehement. The major looked Optimus in the optic, making certain the Prime saw the promise in his words. "We've got every one of them under surveillance… and, believe me, I've checked since Sides went down like that."

Prime nodded. Lennox had paid a large part in ensuring Sector Seven was fully decommissioned, and that process had been a key factor in the negotiations that established NEST in the first place. It was difficult to see any of them having a role in this, but the frown on Lennox's face suggested he was struggling to find a viable alternative.

"But…" the major pulled a hand down his face as his voice trailed off. "Damn it, I've got nothing."

Prime didn't sigh. He didn't shift or fold his arms. Deep in his processor, behind firewalls that Jazz had tested on a regular basis, Prime ran theoretical simulations and wished Prowl was here. The tactician would look at this situation and see things others would miss. Prowl would have at least some idea where to start with this mess. After all, no one had dealt with more of the twins' chaos than Prime's second.

Optimus forced the thought aside. He wasn't ready to accept that he'd lost his friend's steady guidance and subtle smile forever. Not yet… regardless of the communication that had reached him just days before. Nonetheless, his second in command was not here, and Sunstreaker's situation was more real, more urgent, than dwelling on an arrival he awaited more in hope than expectation.

Letting his vents clear in a long, soothing draft, he looked up at the main screen and the satellite images displayed there. A coastal city of almost a quarter of a million humans, living their lives at a speed Prime still struggled to comprehend. Vehicles raced along every road, locomotives hauled massive loads along their steel rails, aircraft lifted from the airport on the city limits, and even the dark waters of the Pacific were littered with vessels coming in to or out of the city's port complex. So many people, so many machines, all coming and going. And somewhere in their midst, a single stricken warrior that Prime would move Cybertron itself to find.

"Very well. Let us assume that a human agency has detained Sunstreaker. How would they move him?" He leaned forward, lowering his faceplates until he was mere feet from Lennox and Epps. "Tell me: what are we looking for?"

The humans started throwing out ideas with a new vigour. Bumblebee lingered too… until Optimus sent him to recharge, with new orders redeploying him to base for the duration his only comfort. Prime couldn't blame the young scout for being eager to help despite his exhaustion. Optimus himself had no intention of resting until his soldiers were returned to home and health.

The alternative was unthinkable.

* * *

The mech lay motionless on the medical berth. His bright red armour plates were scuffed and scratched where he'd thrashed against the metal surface and against Ratchet's gentle restraint. Even offline, sunk deep in a recharge cycle, there was a subtle wrongness to Sideswipe's posture. He looked strained, tense and ill. The medical displays and monitors stacked around him confirmed that the crude diagnosis was more than just Optimus Prime's imagination. Most were displaying a spectrum of yellow and red, Sideswipe's weak and rapidly deteriorating condition easily read by even a non-expert. Over the years, Prime had developed far more expertise in medical matters than he'd ever wanted to. Even so, he clung to a hope that the situation was better than it appeared, and that his old friend would be able to reassure him. At first sight, there seemed little chance of that.

Ratchet sat beside the stricken mech, his optics dim with exhaustion. The medic's soft voice and gentle touch would astonish most of the personnel here on NEST's home base. Not Prime. He'd seen Ratchet nurse Sideswipe and Sunstreaker back to health more often than he cared to remember. He knew the affection the gruff medic held in his spark for their wayward twin terrors. NEST's continuing failure to locate and rescue Sunstreaker troubled Ratchet on a more than professional level. It troubled them all.

Pausing in the doorway of Ratchet's domain, Optimus Prime watched his old friend study a data pad, explaining its contents to the oblivious Sideswipe in a voice too soft for Prime to make out. There was a sharp edge to Ratchet's anxiety that was deeply concerning.

Sideswipe twitched, his optics remaining dark and his processors quiet but the servos in his right hand whirring. His fist clenched, a faint grimace appearing on his face. Ratchet was on his feet within a fraction of a second, leaning over his patient and checking readings on the monitors. The medic scowled, cursing under his breath, and lay a comforting hand on Sideswipe's brow. It was a moment or two before Ratchet sank back into his chair by the berth, his eyes flicked to a bottle of clear liquid on his worktop, his stream of quiet curses intensifying.

Optimus Prime walked quietly to his friend's side, neither advertising his presence nor trying to conceal it. He paused between speaking, looking down at his stricken warrior with worried optics.

"Ratchet?"

"Prime." Whether the medic didn't recognise the implicit question or chose to ignore it, he responded with a simple acknowledgement. Optimus Prime sighed. His fingers ghosted over Sideswipe's chest-plate, feeling the fine tremors that wracked the unconscious mech.

"How is he?"

"Dying." Ratchet's answer was blunt. The medic didn't turn or otherwise respond to his leader's gasp. "And the slagging pit of a thing is that there's nothing wrong with the damn mech. Nothing I can treat. It's Sunstreaker that's dying. And he's taking his twin brother with him."

"There has to be something you can do!" The heat in Prime's outburst surprised even him.

His friend just looked at him, too bowed under the weight of his impotence to react with anger to the accusation in Optimus Prime's tone. The medic's gruff countenance betrayed more shame than anger. This was Ratchet – the medic Autobot and Decepticon had fought entire battles over, whose skills were legendary across half the galaxy. And he wasn't good enough.

"You expect me to save a patient when I don't know where he is, or what's wrong with him?" The words ground out between gritted denta. "Slag it, Prime! I'm not a miracle worker!"

Prime grimaced his apology. His large servos touched Ratchet's shoulder before his old friend jerked away. Hand falling to his side, Prime tried to repair some of the damage.

"Looking at Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, I might believe otherwise. You've kept them alive for many more vorns than anyone could have expected. They have faith in you – as do we all. And whatever has befallen them, they would know that you're doing your best, and ask for nothing more."

Ratchet scowled, lifting a wrench from the table beside him, and turning it over and over in his hands.

"My best is not slagging good enough. Not even close!" He hesitated before going on. "Don't you think I'm doing everything I can?" His words were edged with guilt, and just the slightest hint of doubt. Again he stole a glance towards that jar of clear liquid on the counter, and the syringe lying beside it.

Prime followed his gaze with a pointed look.

"What is that?"

Ratchet flinched again, looking away and almost dropping the wrench he held. He caught it clumsily before it could hit the ground, and settled, turning it over and over in his hands. The old Autobot medic shook his helm, his scowl fierce.

"For Primus' sake, Optimus! There's no physical reason for Sideswipe to be as weak as he is. His symptoms are ghosts… echoes… the result of his processor trying to interpret sensor data and error routines coming through his private comms from Sunstreaker. Whatever happened to poor Sunny, it wiped out the usual filters both of them have to protect against that sort of thing." Prime noticed his medic's use of Sunstreaker's affectionate nickname, but didn't call him on it. He frowned.

"If you can block that data…"

He fell silent in the face of Ratchet's glare. The grizzled mech was building to a conclusion he didn't like. The least Prime could do was hear him out.

"I could set up an electromagnetic interference field. It just might damp off their subconscious com systems, and the corrupted algorithms sending Sides' systems haywire. I reckon we'd have a fifty-fifty chance of the sudden shock killing Sideswipe. Which is kind of irrelevant when it'd almost certainly kill Sunstreaker outright, and Sideswipe wouldn't survive the loss of half his spark.

"So if I can't treat Sunstreaker, and I can't stop his signals reaching Sides, the only thing I can do is try to ease Sideswipe's symptoms, right?" Ratchet paused, scowling. Prime just waited as his friend's voice softened to a murmur. "So I started looking at the symptoms themselves, and you know what I found? Sideswipe is displaying a classic poisoning response, and given the obsession with the stuff on this wretched planet, I'd stake my wrench on it being hydrocarbon poisoning."

Nor Prime did speak, frowning. "Hydrocarbon…?"

Ratchet waved a vague hand. "Vehicle fumes. Fuel. Paint. Solvent. Something of that nature. Whatever it is, Sideswipe's frame is reacting to it. Prime, Cybertron was never rich in organics – we're not designed to process them. We can't flush the impurities and aromatics that just won't burn clean. That's why I have to update the organic subsystem patches in every damn round of physicals. The number of mechs I've had to treat because they can't tell the difference between decayed vegetation and decent mineral oil…!"

"But Sideswipe and Sunstreaker both have that subroutine installed," Prime objected, interrupting his friend's rant with a certain amount of caution. Ratchet shook his head tiredly.

"Slag it, Prime! Far as I can tell, Sunstreaker's processors are scrambled to the Pit and back. A patched, second level routine like that hasn't a chance of functioning, even if Sunny's analysers managed to identify the problem." The medic rubbed his hand across the chevron on his brow. "I'm reading a low level and virtually useless system-flush protocol in Sideswipe. That has to be an echo of Sunny. Sideswipe's own self-diagnostics are checking his toxin levels and environment readings every few breams and cancelling the flush. And that's pointless because whatever signals he's getting from Sunstreaker just re-establishes it moments later. Sideswipe's organic filtration algorithms aren't helping his twin any because they don't have any information on what the problem is, so can't send specific instructions. And all this is taking more energy than either of them has to spare."

Again, Prime simply waited, letting Ratchet spell out the problem in his own way.

"There is one thing… only one… that I can think of that might help Sunstreaker."

The quiet announcement didn't exactly fill Optimus Prime with confidence. He cycled air through his vents. "Anything."

Ratchet's eyes rose again to the liquid and syringe on the side bench. For a long moment he remained silent. When he looked up at Prime, his expression was anguished. Optimus Prime had to strain to hear his friend's voice. It barely rose above a whisper, as if the medic was horrified at his own words.

"If I inject hydrocarbon contamination directly into Sideswipe's energon lines… If I can get a strong enough response from his processor… there's a chance that Sunstreaker's maintenance and filtration system will take a command from Sides instead of the reverse. If I can get Sunstreaker to build the right binding agents… it might just keep him alive long enough for us to get him out of whatever mess he's in."

Prime's optics irised a little wider, his expression thoughtful. "You said hydrocarbon poisoning was dangerous. Injecting it directly…?"

"Human medics, they have an oath. A code they swear to uphold. It starts with 'First do no harm...'" Ratchet shook his head, the movement sharp and angry. "It'll hurt," he admitted bluntly. "A lot. Probably worse than anything Sideswipe's ever been through. Even if he manages to stay offline, he's going to be writhing in agony."

"You could give him something to deaden the pain?"

"No. I can't. I need that reaction to be as strong as I can make it, short of killing him myself. Because – curse it to the slagging Pit, Optimus! – here's the thing: even then it might not work. I'm trying to cure a patient by poisoning his brother – no one's ever done it before. No one's even thought of trying it!" He paused, venting hard. "It might save them. And it might just make their last hours an eternity of torment."

"And if you don't?" Optimus Prime's optics were as dim as his old friend's. His spark felt cold, torn.

Ratchet sighed, reaching out unconsciously to stroke the side of Sideswipe's helm.

"We might as well start engraving a second casket to lie beside Jazz's. They won't last another day. I'd be surprised if they last the night."

Prime and Ratchet shared a long look, the shadow of old grief and the prospect of new mingling in their sparks. Both hated the decision in front of them, both knew they had no choice.

"Do it," Prime ordered softly.


	4. Part Three

_A/N: Posting an early update because I've had a very stressful day and could do with some distraction. Enjoy_

* * *

He knew they were doing everything they could. Despite that, Lennox couldn't stop guilt roiling in the pit of his stomach as he walked back towards the control centre towards the end of the second day. Truthfully, despite his best efforts and those of NEST's dedicated team of analysts, the search was winding down, their initial resources all but exhausted. The laborious, manpower-intensive, on-the-ground search now ramping up wouldn't be quick. Judging by the tension Lennox was picking up from his Autobot friends, it almost certainly wasn't going to be quick enough.

Ratchet hadn't been seen since he vanished into medbay with his patient, and there wasn't a human on the base, Lennox included, who would disturb him there. From what he'd overheard of the medic's report to Prime, Ratchet was unwilling to welcome even Cybertronian guests.

Sideswipe was not stasis-locked according to that latest update. At first Lennox had assumed that was a good thing. The few times he'd seen the condition it had looked far too close to offline for comfort. Apparently, delirious – unable to process clearly and with dozens of system failures – was worse. Stasis lock was serious, but it was at least stable. Today was only the second time Lennox had heard Ratchet describe a mech's condition as 'critical' instead. The first had been when Jazz lay bleeding out on Mission City's battlefield. The human commander might not know much about Cybertronian physiognomy but he'd take a guess that was a bad thing.

Lennox frowned at the thought. Then he looked down at the report an analyst had pressed into his hand as he entered the building. He felt the smooth metal surface of the gadget that went with it, and glanced at his shoulder at the young soldier trailing in his footsteps. He was pretty sure the news they were bringing was bad too.

Optimus Prime turned as his human counterpart entered the control room. Blue optics focussed on the small figures, and then irised down to focus on the papers the major held.

"Lennox." The rumbling acknowledgement vibrated through the air.

"Optimus." Lennox called up, voice carrying but level. "One of my guys thinks he has an idea what happened."

He might as well have fired his rifle. The large room stilled. Suddenly every eye and every optic was locked on him, every breath and every vent held in anticipation. Lennox felt the weight of expectations land like a physical blow. He squared his shoulders, not bowing under the weight. Stopping at the base of the gantry, he extended his hand.

The metal box looked innocuous at first sight. About four inches across and perhaps three wide, it could be a minimalist paperweight, or perhaps the plain end-cap of a more extensive device. The innocent façade wouldn't fool the Autobots for a second. Lennox felt his skin crawl, his nerve-ends twitching in response to a dozen sensor scans. Prime's expression didn't change, but the big mech leaned a little forward, his aspect perplexed.

"I do not recognise this device."

Lennox sighed. He brought his free-hand up to run back through his short-clipped hair. Jerking his head, he waved the soldier behind him forward. Gibbs stepped up and snapped to attention, eyes front. Prime's gaze settled on the young man, searching for insight.

"Sir! It's a car-killer, sir!"

The temperature dropped. Behind his Prime, Ironhide took a step forward, his cannons whirring.

"What did you say?"

Gibbs flinched, and Lennox couldn't blame him. The weapons mech's growled demand carried an almost physical threat.

"Sir! A… a car… killer, sir." The marine's adam's apple bobbed, his convulsive swallow forcing his heart back down into his chest. "It… it… disrupts…"

Lennox sighed. He shifted his weight, drawing the Autobots' attention back away from his subordinate. "Gibbs here has a bit of a checkered past. He was in and out of juvie for near a decade before a judge wised up to the kid and sent him our way, but Grand Theft Auto was pretty much the highlight of his rap sheet."

The young marine managed a shadow of a smirk. "Pretty damn good at it too…" His voice choked off, his throat moving again as he intercepted glares from all around. "… Sir."

Lennox looked down at the device in his hand, hefting it up and down a little, still astonished at the potential devastation in so light a toy. "Apparently the smart kids have gone a bit beyond coat hangers." His mouth twisted in distaste. "According to our analysts, this thing takes out the security systems and other electronics on a vehicle."

Gibbs nodded, his expression sombre. "Got to wipe out the GPS, see? Anyone with half a brain splashes out as much on trackers and comms tech as on the wheels these days. Half the sweet rides out there won't even start without some kind of electric key." He tilted his head towards the device. "So if you're gonna 'jack a car, y'see, sir, you leave one of them on the thing 'till you get it somewhere to strip it down." He glanced up at the screens mounted on the gantry, his expression twisting into a grimace. "Gotta be a dozen teams on the streets, a city that size. Probably ship the wheels out with the c-k in place, get a new box back from their middle man along with the wad they're promised."

Prime's engine rumbled, his expression still doubtful. Lennox could only shrug up at him. He hadn't known about the new tech himself an hour before. Until Gibbs came forward with his own kit, NEST's analysts had never seen one. They could tell the device acted as a short-range interference source, its signals conducted through the metal shell. They couldn't tell what effect it would have on a Cybertronian's systems.

"Don't look like nothin' much."

Lennox started, surprised by the voice of Skids close above his right ear. His half-turn in that direction was purely instinctive. He should have known better; the smaller twins employed distraction and diversion as a matter of course.

With all attention on his brother, Mudflap lifted the small steel case from Lennox's outstretched hand before anyone could react. He hit the ground a moment later, a piercing electronic squeal blending with the ringing impact of metal on concrete. Cries almost masked the rattle of the metal box as it skittered across the floor, jarred loose from the young mech's half-closed grip by the impact. Lennox didn't let them distract him. Judging by the effect the "car-killer" – and even thinking the term made Lennox nauseous – had on Mudflap, and presumably on Sunstreaker too, the last thing they needed was another unwary mech stepping on the thing. Swearing silently at his own mistake, the major followed the device with two quick strides, using the side of his foot to knock it safely under the gantry before turning back to check on the fallen Autobot.

Mudflap was a limp pile of circuits, twitching feebly in Optimus Prime's arms. Skids didn't look much better. The second twin's optics were over-bright, their irises dilated and unfocussed. Only Ironhide's grip on his upper arms seemed to be keeping him upright, and, as Lennox watched, the senior mech lifted Skids off his pedes and hurried after Prime.

Ratchet met them just outside the medical bay, wasting no time in scanning the young mech Prime held before glancing at Skids with the same brisk air of examination. The doctor's angry snarl was oddly reassuring. Cables snaked from his wrist towards Mudflap, slipping between seams and penetrating the orange armour. In the tense silence of the hangar, the clicks and whirs coming from the mech's frame seemed unnaturally loud. Mudflap stirred and groaned. Dim optics flickered and flared into life as Ratchet's cables withdrew. The small mech shifted, rolling out of Optimus Prime's cradling arms and landing on his feet with catlike grace. He blinked up at the senior Autobots surrounding him with frank bewilderment and looked around for his twin.

Ratchet released the second scout in a fraction of the time he'd taken with Mudflap. Skids slipped away from Ironhide's grasp and hit his twin with a forceful embrace.

"What the frag _was_ that, bro?"

"Err… ya gone an' slipped y'r circuits, Skids?" Mudflap's confusion was painfully clear. He cycled his optics, looking back at Ratchet as if in hope of enlightenment.

It came with a thump as Ratchet slapped the helms of both twins with a single economical gesture.

"When will you two aft-heads learn _not_ touch things you don't recognise?" The medic glared, folding his arms across his chest-plate and throwing a glance back towards the medical bay. His sharp optics scanned the room, his scowl deepening as his optics picked out the burglary device under the gantry. The humans stationed upon the metal scaffold gave startled cries, the entire rig rattling under the force of Ratchet's magnets. The 'car-killer' trembled, gravity resisting for a few moments before it slid out along the concrete, leapt into the air and came to rest hovering a few inches above Ratchet's servos. Lennox found himself surprised it didn't ignite under the heat of the medic's glare. "Fair warning, Prime. If I find the pit-spawn responsible for this thing, you'd better be there, or I'm not promising _anything_."

Ratchet ignored Prime's nod of acknowledgement, his scans flickering again over Mudflap and Skids even as he scowled at them.

"I do _not_ have time for slagging idiots. Jolt! Take these two to get some recharge. A full cycle. Watch them!"

The blue-armoured young mech jerked to attention and stepped forward, his servos dropping onto the shoulders of the confused young twins. Ratchet didn't wait for the acknowledgement. He was already turning back towards medbay.

"I need to test this thing out. Give me a couple of hours to programme countermeasures, Prime. And tell our idiots to be careful in the meantime!"

Ratchet was gone, taking the device with him as he returned to Sideswipe's side. Jolt herded the younger twins towards the back of the hangar, the optics of their superiors watching them go. Lennox glanced over his shoulder, nodding a dismissal at his gathered soldiers – Gibbs amongst them.

The hush of shock and concern was broken by the scuffing of feet on concrete, and the steadily resuming bustle of NEST's headquarters. Lennox shook himself, feeling his muscles loosen and his chest tighten with weary relief.

"Major."

"Prime?"

"Thank you for drawing this to our attention. There seems little doubt that a device of this kind could be responsible for Sunstreaker's absence and failure to respond."

Lennox nodded, the thanks leaving a bad taste in his mouth. It was little enough progress. The door to the medical bay was once again an impenetrable barrier. The polished steel reflected his face in a distorted mask, his eyes dark shadows in the pale blur. The adrenaline of the moment was fading, leaving him bone weary. Perspiration cooled on his skin. The everyday noise and movement of the NEST hangar held a tense, almost frenetic note. The drama of Mudflap's collapse and the brevity of Ratchet's emergence had made the already-difficult situation all the more real for the close-knit unit Lennox and Prime commanded.

"Will it help?" he asked, voice low and pitched not to carry.

Prime's vents were quiet, only the slightest of breezes betraying his sigh. "I fear that only time will tell." He shifted, his helm tilting a little as he looked down at his human colleague. "I believe our search has acquired a new focus?"

"Tracking the car gangs down won't be easy. The local PD has spent decades and got nowhere fast."

Ironhide's cannon whirred. His expressive face betrayed the depths of his conviction. "Then we'll have to see to their motivation."

Lennox winced but he couldn't disagree. He pulled his cell-phone from his pocket, cycling through the numbers until he got to the contact he'd been assigned in the local police department.

"Detective Frye? Lennox. We need to talk…"

Climbing the gantry with new impetus, he got back to work.

* * *

The air of NEST's medical bay was thick and heavy. An acrid odour rose from the still frame, the all-pervading dust of this organic world scorching as it settled on superheated armour. Sideswipe's limbs twitched and turned, the mechanisms convulsing as his frame tried to rid itself of the poison that contaminated it.

A poison Ratchet had inflicted.

The medic had stilled his patient's vocaliser, diverting Sideswipe's unconscious cries to a private com-channel. The other Autobots didn't need to hear their friend's pain. Ratchet himself listened to every scream, every wail wrenched from the damaged systems, knowing that he deserved the punishment.

He had knowingly and deliberately caused harm to a patient. The fact that he'd done it to save another, with the greater good of both in mind, stopped his medic's programming from damaging conflict, but did nothing to relieve the guilt he still felt.

"Easy, Sides." He rested a hand on the dark helm, ignoring the heat there that sent a throbbing pain through his sensitive servo sensors. "Easy there. I've got you."

He didn't expect a response, and only vented a heavy sigh when none came. Weary, but determined, he settled to refining the crude patch he'd worked out for the human disruptor. The device was vicious – its effects not unlike those of Starscream's null-rays, but conducted rather than transmitted, and all the more dangerous for that. As long as the device was in physical contact with a mech's armour, jagged and incoherent waveforms would be transmitted through their circuitry, disrupting both frame and processor. While a null-ray blast would drop a mech into stasis until their fragmented systems could reboot, the on-going assault disrupted the stasis failsafe as it did every other system, and prevented a reboot from starting, let alone reaching its conclusion.

Ops level shielding – such as the surviving officer corps of both armies carried as a matter of routine – would buffer the signals for a few clicks, long enough to shake off a null-ray or remove and destroy this insidious human device. The rank and file though… Ratchet sighed, finishing work on a temporary patch that would neutralise the signal's effects for long enough for a mech to safely achieve stasis. That would have to do for now.

A more effective, longer term solution would have to wait – until Ratchet had a few orns to spend on the problem without other distractions, or until Wheeljack finally arrived and had an afternoon to spare.

The thought was bittersweet. The prospect of seeing his friend again after too long apart warmed Ratchet's thoughts. Anticipation of the news the engineer brought with him – that Wheeljack had already hinted at in his advance comms – chilled him through and through.

They'd already lost too damn much in this fragging war. Ratchet was determined that they would lose no more.

Sideswipe shifted. Ratchet reached out once more to pat his patient's smooth armour, frowned, reset his sensors and reached out again. For the first time, a flicker of hope dared to make itself felt against the shadow on his spark.

Sideswipe's temperature was coming down.

Tentatively, careful to keep his own firewalls high, Ratchet jacked into the warrior's systems. They were still a mess. Signals that had to be from Sunstreaker cut through Sideswipe's processor in jagged bursts of noise, shattering anything approaching coherent thought before it could form and sending wild commands to his straining frame. But, as Ratchet watched and prayed, there was the barest semblance of order emerging from the chaos. It was a fragile, intermittent thing, wiped away within microklicks, but a few sparkbeats later it came again, and then again.

Ratchet stayed jacked into Sideswipe's access ports. He watched with a desperate hope in his spark and a quiet keen catching in his vents, as, slowly and laboriously, Sideswipe began to build the antigens he needed to combat the hydrocarbon poisoning. And then, after long breems of struggle, as the stray code from Sunstreaker stopped battling those instructions and started to complement them.

Sideswipe's systems hiccupped, strained, and settled. The disruptor that the humans called a "car-killer" was still at work on Sunstreaker's neural net, sending his brother's systems awry. The most time-critical threat though – that of the hydrocarbons poisoning them both – had abated.

Ratchet dropped his face into his servos, trembling almost as hard as Sideswipe. They had time. Just a bare servo-full of jours – a few of days at the outside – but, just possibly, with Primus's blessing, it could be enough to find Sunstreaker and get to the root of this problem.

Gathering himself, he raised his helm and focussed on the still fragmented signals coming down the hard-line link. Without much hope he sent the officer-level command that should speak to Sideswipe's core programming.

"_Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sunstreaker"_

With most mechs, the automatic system response would identify their own location alone. Only twins and mechs with strong bonds knew their other half's location with equal precision. Until now, Sideswipe's systems had responded with gibberish, where they'd managed a response at all. This time Ratchet found himself stilling his vents, anticipation building as he waited for an answer.

The signal that pinged back at him was in the correct format at least – the sequence and cadence right for a set of Cybertronian coordinates.

He released his vent with a low sigh, hopes dashed before they could truly develop. His processor had provided the local translation as quickly as it registered the data. The coordinates Sideswipe had transmitted were not only well offshore from the landmass they occupied, but almost three kilometres below the surface of one of this world's oceans. Sideswipe's systems may have recovered enough to provide a coherent answer, but that didn't mean they could provide a correct one.

Sideswipe was tossing and turning on the berth. A murmur broke from him, not quite coherent enough to be described as speech but perhaps an attempt at Sunstreaker's name. His optics flickered online, unfocussed and unseeing, before fading.

Ratchet monitored Sideswipe as he fought almost to consciousness, before descending once more into frame-straining delirium. Sighing he straightened the inert frame, tucking a clenched servo in against his patient's side.

Packaging the coordinates together with an update on Sideswipe's condition, Ratchet pinged both off to Prime. A second transmission loaded the revised patch onto the base network, ready for access by all their people. Optimus Prime acknowledged both signals, his relief at the Sideswipe's improvement as glad, and his interpretation of the location report as resignedly negative, as Ratchet's own. The only real instruction he could offer – 'keep asking' – was one Ratchet hardly needed. The addendum – 'and get some rest yourself' – was one he firmly intended to ignore.


	5. Part Four

Sideswipe was doing better. Still not well, Lennox knew, but apparently his systems had stabilised enough for Prime to drag Ratchet away for a brief, and no-doubt fretful, recharge. That was small comfort to the Special Forces major who considered both Sideswipe and his missing brother as much his responsibility as Prime's.

He braced himself before entering medbay, one hand against the steel wall of the mech-sized corridor. Prime might have ordered the medic to his berth, but Lennox wouldn't put it past Ratchet to slip back as soon as Optimus turned away. The last thing Major Lennox wanted now was to meet Ratchet's accusing optics. No excuses could justify his abject failure to find Sunsteaker. Not even all of the resources Lennox had thrown at the problem, the satellite scans, the police liaisons, the search parties and CIA agents he'd called in, all his efforts to track the errant bot, would placate an Autobot medic watching his patient, his friend, slipping away.

Hell, he'd even diverted search planes to scan those empty ocean coordinates, and – more of a gamble still – a Primus-damned pride-of-the-fleet _submarine_ on the off-chance that there really was some unexplored crevice or deep trench that Sunstreaker might have been dropped into.

There wasn't. The sea floor at that point was as shallow and uninteresting as the maps made it, and what depths there were came back as empty as the surface – both to the eyes of searchers and on satellite maps timed to match Ratchet's report.

Prime had warned him, had handed over the coordinates without expectation, but it still came as a crushing blow. He'd need all the strength he could muster to avoid buckling, if Ratchet's expression offered a second.

Despite his efforts to prepare himself, he flinched when he triggered the automatic door and found himself the focus of a pair of bright blue optics. A moment of surprise and fear passed before he noticed a second pair of blue glows, and then the distinctive frames behind both – Bumblebee's vibrant yellow perched on the edge of a medical berth, Ironhide's solid black leaning against another. Sideswipe lay still on the berth between them, too far off the ground for Lennox to see his face-plates, but there was no blue glow to reflect from the ceiling tiles, no sign that the mech was awake.

"Major!" Bumblebee pitched his voice low. "You startled us. We thought you might be Ratchet coming back."

Ironhide rolled his optics before eyeing the soldier thoughtfully. "Well, come in if you're coming in then."

Lennox was too accustomed to the warrior's gruff tone to take offence from it.

"Guess I'm not the only one sneaking in while Ratchet's away."

Bumblebee gave a tired chirp, managing to put a smile in his voice, despite the situation. "Just you and me. Ironhide's actually meant to be here."

"Won't stop Ratch dismantling me if he finds I've let intruders into his medbay." There was no real malice in Ironhide's voice. If anything it was softer than usual, his optics flicking from Bumblebee down to the unconscious patient before returning to Lennox with an enquiring look. "Figure Sides here has never said no to a party whether or not he remembered it afterwards."

The human major tried to look more at ease than he felt as he walked to the berth where Bumblebee sat. Even that weak pretence fell away as the young scout lifted him to its surface, level with Sideswipe's. The invalid's armour had been polished to a gloss Lennox more usually associated with Sunstreaker. The image of Ratchet labouring with such care over his patient's outer shell because there was simply nothing else to do for him wasn't a happy one.

"How's he doing?"

He didn't expect any improvement since Ratchet's last update, but Lennox' heart sank nonetheless when both mechs stilled. Bumblebee looked at him with sad optics. Ironhide just grunted. Neither gave voice to the grim prognosis.

The looks hurt almost more than the words could. Lennox swore, pinching the bridge of his nose and closing his eyes. It was several seconds before he dared open them, letting his gaze rest on Sideswipe's gleaming shell for a long moment before looking up at his concerned companions.

"It just doesn't seem fair… That Sides has to suffer because Sunny got into trouble, I mean."

Bumblebee whirred a quiet agreement, but he tilted his head, his manner resigned. "Split-spark twins," he offered with a shrug.

Ironhide huffed a sigh through his vents. "And for all Ratch's rants, Sides wouldn't have it any other way."

"You know, no one's told me what that means yet? I mean, I saw Skids react when Mudflap went down, but…" he waved a hand towards the still form, at a loss for how to encapsulate the breadth of his question.

"It's difficult to put into human words."

Lennox was hearing that less frequently as time went by. Ironhide generally made the effort to explain when Lennox asked, even if he ignored the rest of NEST. Explaining things to humans was pretty much Bumblebee's job description, together with guarding the kid, and Optimus was patience himself when a spare moment presented itself. Even so, he sometimes felt there were gulfs of understanding, the whole concept of Cybertronian twins amongst them, that simply couldn't be overcome. It wasn't going to stop him trying.

"They're telepathic with each other, right?"

"That's part of it," Ironhide grunted.

Bumblebee shifted on his aft, looking down at Sideswipe with a quiet whir of regret. "It's more like… you know how you always have a quiet voice in the back of your head, second-guessing your decisions or speculating about the people around you, or, I don't know, wondering what's for dinner?"

Lennox nodded, intrigued.

"Sunny and Sides are that little voice for each other," Bumblebee said, spreading his hands to either side as if trying to express how inadequate the explanation was. "Sometimes it might go quiet for a while – if they're a long way apart or one is in recharge – but they're always there, inside one another."

"How do they stay sane?" The question burst out of him before he could censer it. He was expecting Ironhide and Bumblebee to react with anger, not with whirring laughter. It seemed the initial premise of that question was giving them problems.

Ironhide stifled his laugh with an effort, one hand thumping down on the berth beside him.

"It's just what twins are." He looked down, and the smile faded. "But imagine that voice screaming inside your helm."

"And if it was gone for good?" Lennox felt the blood drain from his face, really understanding for the first time. "You're saying that if Sunstreaker dies, it's not just like losing a brother. Sideswipe won't just suffer…"

"It'll be half of Sideswipe dying," Bumblebee whispered. He shuffled forward on the berth, leaning forward to rest a hand on Sideswipe's arm. "It'll be Sides himself."

Ironhide rocked a little, his engine grumbling. "He wouldn't survive."

Lennox climbed to his feet, pacing for a few seconds before dropping back down on the cool metal surface of the med berth. Skirmishes against the Decepticons played out in front of his eyes: all the times Sideswipe had thrown himself into the forefront of battle, latterly with his brother by his side. It was too easy to picture one or both of them lying here damaged, in a thousand different scenarios where saving a single life would be challenging enough and asking to save two just too far beyond reach.

"How the hell have you kept them alive this long?"

"That's a question Ratch asks himself every time they end up in here." Ironhide grunted. "He's got a lot to do with it. Most medics wouldn't even try to save a pair of damaged twins. Four pairs in five didn't make it past their first vorn – and that was before the war fragged up everyone's lives. But even Ratch doesn't claim full credit. Megatron ordered twins hunted down, back in the early days. Said they weakened the species." The hard note in his voice softened, a fond note entering it. "This pair are fighters. They took one look at the Decepticons and decided they weren't going down easily."

Bumblebee warbled an agreement, settling back where he sat on the berth. "They've kept themselves alive. And lived every moment of the vorns they've had." He smirked. "Drove Prowl wild."

Ironhide shook his helm ruefully. The big mech let a smile ghost across his face-plate, his hand falling to rest of Sideswipe's still shoulder.

"They've always been a handful. Prowl was the only one who could ever stay one step ahead of their tricks."

"He had plenty of practice with Jazz." Bumblebee whirred out a quiet laugh despite the sorrow that crossed his expression. He looked down at Sideswipe, shaking his head. "Wish we had Prowl here now. Jazz too."

Ironhide grunted, patting Sideswipe's shoulder before moving a little closer to Bumblebee instead. He reached out to run one finger down the young scout's helm. "You and me both, kid. You and me both."

"Who's Prowl?"

Not for the first time, Lennox suppressed his annoyance when the two mechs startled. The presence of a single, small human must be easy to overlook, all the more so when the Autobots in question were sharing the familiar, melancholic look that came over them on the rare occasions they spoke of distant friends. Most of the time they avoided such discussions, whether through taboo or just wary of tempting fate, Lennox couldn't be sure. Usually he wouldn't question the quiet, regretful comments. Here and now though, in the depths of night and with two of the Autobots he knew best, he couldn't help asking.

"I've heard the name before – from you, from Ratchet and Prime. No one's seemed that keen to stop and explain though. He's important to you?"

Ironhide grunted, looking away and letting his hand fall away from Bumblebee. "To us? I'd say Prime's lieutenant was pretty important to the whole fragging planet."

Lennox's look of curiosity faded into a frown. "Thought that was Jazz?" he asked cautiously. This felt like dangerous territory. Both Bumblebee and Ironhide had tensed, their expressions more than a little grim.

"Jazz and Prowl did a lot of things together." Ironhide sighed, air pushed out through his vents. He leaned down a little, his shear bulk looming over Lennox as his blue optics focussed on the human. "We don't talk about it a lot, Lennox, but you should probably know. Optimus had two lieutenants – back in the day. Technically Prowl was our second, Jazz was our third, but the way they worked together… well, sometimes I wondered if even they remembered that."

"The two of them pulled off things even Prime never dared to believe possible," Bumblebee added, his head tilting a little to one side, and his voice wistful.

"One of the most unlikely partnerships I've ever seen." Ironhide shook his head in mild disbelief. "And one of the best." He vented another sigh, this one longer and lower. "The stories we could tell you, Lennox. The stories the _Decepticons_ could tell you! Those two mechs could be deadly when apart, and either was strong enough to take the weight when Optimus needed a shoulder to lean on. But together…. The Autobots follow Prime, Lennox, without hesitation or doubts. Optimus Prime gives us vision, a dream to aim for and a reason to keep going, but sometimes I can't help but wonder if Prowl and Jazz were the backbone that kept us marching. Kept us strong all along."

There was silence for a few moments, and it wasn't a happy silence. There was something more going on here, and with Ironhide in an unusually talkative mood, Lennox intended to get to the bottom of it. He leaned back, his legs stretched out in front of him and his arms behind him to support his weight against the metal tabletop.

"So… from the way you're talking, I guess I won't get to meet this guy?"

"You might." Bumblebee's wistful, hopeful offering overlapped with Ironhide's blunt "No."

Lennox stayed still, careful not to draw attention as the two mechs exchanged glares above his head.

"Prowl might still be on his way. Just because it's been a few years… We don't know how far away he was. His team might have been searching halfway across the galaxy! Just 'cause he's not here yet doesn't mean…" Bumblebee trailed off into silence. He shook his head, engine whining after his outburst. His vocaliser reset with a click and he cycled his optics before trying again. "Prowl wouldn't ignore Prime's call, 'Hide. He'll come if he can."

"I ain't denying that, kid." Ironhide's optics slid to one side, his voice quiet.

Bumblebee stilled, the regular whirr of his vents hitching for a moment. He ducked his helm a little, blue optics intent on Ironhide's face, and edged closer.

"You know something," he accused. A few seconds of silence dragged by before Bumblebee's shoulders slumped, his optics dimming and the plating falling flat against his back. Ironhide looked up with reluctance, his own broad shoulders hanging heavy. His optics flicked to Sideswipe and then to Lennox, but his attention was all on Bumblebee as he went on.

"Prime picked up a message a few orns back, Bumblebee. Sent ahead by a couple of incoming Autobots."

Bumblebee studied his commander's face, the door flaps and elements of superfluous bodywork trembling on his back. "Who?"

"Wheeljack and Bluestreak. They're six months out still."

"Blue's coming?" For a moment, Bumblebee brightened, but then a distressed click escaped him. "But… but they were searching for the AllSpark with Prowl."

Ironhide nodded grimly. "There wasn't a lot of detail. Guess they weren't sure the comms were secure. But they said they got separated and hadn't heard from Prowl since. They gave a date reference."

There was a burble of Cybertronian, presumably naming the day, and all the remaining animation drained from Bumblebee.

"Mission City," the scout said flatly and then his face dropped into his hands, a thin keening sound rising from him. Ironhide swore, voice soft and full of pain, before throwing an awkward arm around Bumblebee's shoulders.

The grieving 'bots took all of Lennox's attention, so much so that he didn't even notice Sideswipe stir on the berth beside him. Ironhide didn't miss it, his spare hand going out to stroke Sideswipe's helm in a surprisingly gentle gesture, even as his other arm held Bee against his side.

The big weapons' master glanced in Lennox's direction as the human leapt to his feet, mouth open to ask about Sideswipe. His sorrowful expression killed the exclamation on Lennox's lips.

"Ratchet says he's been half-awake a couple of times today, still delirious. He should recharge if he can." He looked down at the ailing warrior, his voice firm as he snapped out a command in Cybertronian.

Sideswipe said… something… the usually warm voice flat and robotic, the response seemingly automatic. Ironhide sighed and shook his head. A moment later the palm-sized tablet-come-smartphone in Lennox's breast pocket beeped. He fished it out, momentarily grateful for the distraction, until he saw the day's third set of coordinates listed in the Cybertronian data feed. Ironhide had marked this one with the same warning flags as the others – off-shore, below the ocean floor. Sideswipe's coordinate system seemed to be drifting with time, just as it had between the first two reports. It still wasn't close to being a useable guide to their search.

Disappointed, Lennox nodded an acknowledgement up at Ironhide. His wary eyes scanned the two conscious Autobots. Bee seemed to be pulling himself together, quiet keens still spilling from his trembling form from time to time, but suppressed for Sideswipe's sake.

The younger Autobot shook his head, glancing down at the patient, before looking up with over-bright optics. "Prowl and Jazz… They really were bonded then?"

Ironhide grunted, not moving his arm from the scout's shoulders, but not meeting Bee's optics either.

"Guess only Prime knows for sure. And Ratchet maybe. They're still not talking. But it's a Pit of a coincidence."

"Bonded?" Lennox flinched as two pairs of optics snapped down to him. The Autobots eased apart, Bumblebee straightening up, Ironhide's arm dropping away. The thin wails from Bumblebee had subsided entirely now. The silence was split only by an unconscious murmur from Sideswipe, the red warrior's helm tossing from side to side despite Ironhide's soothing touch.

Ironhide and Bee shared a look before the elder 'bot spoke, voice gruff. "Sometimes a pair of 'bots can choose to form a link between their sparks."

"Like Sunstreaker and Sideswipe's?"

Bee's vocaliser whirred in something that might have been disagreement. Ironhide tilted his head, scowling.

"Not really. But similar."

"That doesn't make a whole lot of sense, 'Hide."

"A whole lot of things about bonding throw common sense to the Pit." Ironhide shook his head. "There are advantages as well as the disadvantages. But, yeah, it's pretty rare since the war broke out because of the whole double jeopardy thing." He looked down at Sideswipe. There was a faint glow in the 'bots optics now, but no sign that he recognised his surroundings. A murmur of Cybertronian spilled from him, but judging by the sad frown on Ironhide's face, it was the fever talking, not Sideswipe's rational self. "It's not quite as Primus-damned-certain as with split-spark twins, but you sure don't see a lot of broken-sparked bondmates walking around."

Lennox nodded grimly. He'd seen the Autobots grieving Jazz after the Mission City battle. From the way they were talking, they'd known even then that they were most likely mourning the lost sparks of two officers rather than just the one.

"So that's why this Prowl doesn't come up much in conversation," he noted, more for something to say than anything else. He knew better than to offer false comfort to his fellow warriors. "I was kind of confused when I heard Sunny and Sides talking about him last week."

Ironhide's frown was redirected, fixing Lennox in its thousand-watt glare.

"The Twins were talking about Prowl?"

"Well, if you'd got that message…?"

Ironhide shook his head, the gesture emphatic. "Prime's not advertising it yet. Not until 'Jack and young Blue are close enough to give us details." He hummed thoughtfully, gazing down at Sideswipe. The crimson shell was shifting, the occasional mutters growing louder as his optics flickered. "I wouldn't put it past this pair to hack the base coms though. That might have a lot to do with how out of sorts they've been lately."

"They were friends of Prowl's?" Lennox ventured.

A rumble of something like laughter vibrated Ironhide's frame. "'Friends' might be the wrong word. But, maybe… Yeah, I guess they were kind of fond of one another, in a driving each other to the Pit sort of a way. As front-liners, they answered to the tactical office. Prowl was their immediate commander for a long time. The mech tried to find them in that last panic, when Cybertron fell. They'd already found their own way off world."

He leaned forward as he spoke, putting a little weight on the hand he'd rested on Sideswipe's shoulder. The red front-liner had started to become more active, tossing and turning, his optics brighter.

"Rest easy, youngling," Ironhide murmured in Cybertronian before switching to English. "Sideswipe, you need to stay calm." He paused, leaning closer and taking both Sideswipe's shoulders in his hands. "Can you hear me, youngster? Sideswipe? Where's your brother? Where's Sunstreaker? Where's Sunny?"

Lennox held his breath and Bumblebee stilled his vents, both of them straining to hear any answer, desperately hoping Sideswipe could provide the information that had eluded them all.

"Sunny…" Sideswipe murmured the name in English, his response to Ironhide dazed and incoherent. "Hurts… it hurts… can't breathe. Got to find… But I'm here, and where…? Prowl? Prowl could find us… help us." The mech's incomprehensible rambles faded into silence but Ironhide and Bumblebee clamped their hands to their helms, and Lennox mirrored them as a surge of static burst from his radio earpiece at astonishing volume. Scowling, massaging below his ears to ease his aching jawbone, Lennox scrabbled once more for the tablet computer he'd only just put away.

_- Prowl? Prowler? You gotta help… Sunny… it's cold and it's dark and it's damp and it hurts. It hurts… Sunny? Where…? Where are we? Prowl? Help… please… help us… please… -_

The translated Cybertronian broke up into random symbols, the automatic algorithm NEST had been provided with failing as the delirious mech slipped back towards recharge. Ironhide vented hard. The weapons mech had taken a few steps backwards in the face of the radio bombardment. He reclaimed them, his expression strained. Looking down at Lennox, his vocaliser whirred, struggling for words.

Ratchet didn't give him a chance to find any. The medic appeared from nowhere, brushing past Ironhide to reach his patient, fussing over the prone mech for a long minute as he ensured Sideswipe was once again resting comfortably. There was silence in Medbay. Ratchet glared, his body hitched up into a towering rage that couldn't quite belie the tired slump of his shoulders.

"Well?" he demanded.

"We were just talking, Ratch." Ironhide's hands came up defensively in front of him. Bumblebee was already slipping towards the door, quite willing to leave the senior bot and the NEST major in the lurch. Ratchet's arm snapped out, an extended finger pinning the scout in place, even as his optics did the same to the larger Ironhide.

"Talking?" Ratchet vented hard. His gaze flicked towards Lennox before returning to Sideswipe. "About Prowl?"

"I wanted to know who he was," Lennox volunteered. Wary as he was of Ratchet's fury, he was pretty sure the Autobot wouldn't hurt him. He was less certain Ironhide and Bumblebee could say the same. "I'd heard the name."

Ratchet's aggression drained away. Only the weariness remained as he dropped into the chair beside Sideswipe's berth. The look he turned on Ironhide was heavy with exhaustion and sorrow. "You should've known better. I left you here to watch my patient, not upset him." He dropped his face into his hands. "Primus, but I wish we had Prowl here right now. If anyone could figure this out and find Sunny…" He shook his head, looking up tiredly. "I'm awake now. I'll sit with him. Get out."

There was no vehemence behind the words, but it was an order nonetheless. Ironhide nodded, scooping Lennox up as he followed Bumblebee to the door. The human didn't complain, letting himself be carried and leaving both medic and patient in peace.

* * *

Something was wrong. He'd been sure of it even before the call. The twins had never given up on anything so easily in their lives. He was ninety-eight point nine percent sure they wouldn't start with him.

And then the forlorn wail, crying out across the cold vacuum with a desperate plea for aid.

Even when he heard it, he hesitated.

Was he ready for this? Could he set foot on the world where Jazz had bled and died? Would he be able to face what waited for him, or would every vent remind him of that loss? Could any world be left untainted by the energon that seeped into its organic soil and rose in dark miasma through its over-thick air?

He wasn't ready. He knew it in his spark, just as he'd known it when he entered the system. He wasn't strong enough, and might never be. But Prime waited for him, and Ironhide, and Ratchet, and while he longed to see them, he knew that he would be committing himself. Once Ratchet saw him, there'd be no chance of giving in to the temptation to rest… if that had ever really been an option.

His spark pulsed, and he felt a flutter against it. He should calm himself. He couldn't, his turbulent emotions threatening to override his processor.

He'd run out of time for uncertainty: something was _wrong_. Maybe, before the call, he'd have thought it was a trick – the twins' final effort to lure him into a response. Afterwards… no. Maybe, just maybe, the need was actually as desperate as Sideswipe seemed to think.

That wasn't a chance he could turn away from.

He wasn't ready. But he had no choice.


	6. Part Five

"Hey, isn't that your truck?"

Lennox scowled. "No," he snapped, in the defiance of the evidence. Turning, he gestured for Epps to take the squad they'd brought back out to the muster point. With a bit of luck, the signs of activity might keep Ironhide quiet. Yeah… right.

The throaty engine revving outside was a hurry-up Lennox didn't need. Silently, he cursed the impatient weapons mech and fixed his scowl on the police detective in front of him instead. The woman gave him a considering look, not entirely convinced, before shrugging it off.

"Look, major. We're doing our best to be cooperative here, but this was our best lead."

Detective Frye waved a hand, her gesture taking in the oil-streaked concrete underfoot and the half-dismantled vehicles in the bays on their right. A scattering of stab-vested officers moved between them, checking for VIM numbers or other ways to identify their legitimate owners. The garage workers, techs and assorted, leather wearing, teenage hangers-on had been taken to the nearest precinct for processing. It was faintly possible that one of them might leave off spewing profanities for long enough to say something helpful. Lennox wasn't holding his breath.

Their eyes hadn't so much as flickered when he shoved a picture of Sunstreaker's wheels in their faces. A few had whistled in admiration. One young punk had left off insulting the cop arm-locking him for long enough to wonder aloud what the major was compensating for. There had been avarice, sure, and jealousy, but no hint of recognition.

Lennox glared across the garage at the yellow sports car sitting on jacks by the far wall. It had a car-killer attached to the undertray, but there any resemblance to his target ended. Before meeting the Autobots, he might have thought it a pretty neat car. Now he knew there was no comparison.

He turned back to the detective, acknowledging her with a brief nod. "Right, so this tip was a bust. What's the next step?"

"There isn't one." The detective shook her head, running a hand back through her hair. "Look, I don't know what kind of tech you guys have stashed in that vehicle, but this wasn't just our best shot, it was our only one." Frye shook her head. Her voice didn't rise, but instead dropped, becoming a harsh and carrying whisper as a little of her frustration showed. "You won't tell us where the vehicle was stolen from, you won't tell us who left it there, or what's in it. How the hell do you expect us to track the thing down if you can't even tell us what borough we should start in? We can't follow the trail when there isn't one to follow."

"We need that vehicle found! Now!"

The other officers in the place had fallen silent, watching the low-pitched confrontation. They looked away as Lennox scanned the place with ice in his blue eyes. Nothing the detective had said was untrue, and none of it was under the NEST major's control.

He moderated his voice, pinning her with a look of complete sincerity.

"Lives depend on it."

"And that's the only reason I'm still spending time on Grand Theft Auto. But I need you to tell me more. Just give me something to _work_ with."

Frye sighed, reading his taut muscles and clenched fists. She rubbed her brow.

"Look, Major Lennox, I've got the uniforms keeping their eyes open. Traffic enforcement are asking around, and I'll make sure any hint of a clue gets followed up. If we ask the right crowd enough questions, we might shake something loose, but – honestly? – your best bet is to wait for parts of whatever the hell you're looking for to show up on the black market."

There weren't many mental images that could make a special forces major blanch. He swallowed convulsively, feeling the blood drain from his face. Instinct kicked in, and he avoided the detective's touch, swaying backwards before her hand could make contact on his arm. Defensive, and angry with himself for _being_ defensive, Lennox glared at her.

"I'm giving you all I can, Detective. If I knew where Sun… where the car was when it was taken I'd tell you."

His hesitation was a mistake. He saw the detective's eyes harden and knew she'd caught it. She'd suspected he was holding something back before, now she was certain. She stepped back, putting space between them, as she folded her arms.

"My people will keep their eyes open, Major, but if you're serious about lives being at risk, then talk to the FBI, NSA, someone you trust enough to be straight with. 'Cause I've got to tell you, lives depend on everything I do – every two-bit low life with a gun, every scumbag husband who thinks a marriage license gives them a power of life and death, that I put away. I've got a dozen case files on my desk, and at least ten of them have what we like to call a shred of evidence to go on, which is more than I've got now."

There was nothing he could say to that. Detective Frye had promised to do what she could, and nothing more. He could respect that. He nodded, curt and expressionless and turned on his heel. Her voice carried after him as he headed for the wide door and the light that streamed through it.

"We'll call you if something comes up, Major. Don't call us."

Ironhide revved as he stepped, blinking, into the daylight, and Lennox headed for the Autobot. 'Hide already knew that Sunstreaker wasn't here – had known that before he'd even rolled to a stop outside. Even so, he'd want an update, and back on base, Optimus and Ratchet would grill them all for details.

Lennox had no fragging idea what he was going to tell them.

* * *

"You're giving up?"

Ironhide's cannons rumbled, the big black mech rotating them in his agitation. He stared down at the humans, and Epps sidled over towards the frowning soldier at the guard station, careful to give the impression that he was acting out of duty rather than, you know, fear. Even Major Lennox swayed a little, trying very hard not to step back in the face of the angry Autobot. The major's shoulders straightened and he didn't look away. He was a hell of a lot braver than Epps was to stand up to that glare.

"No! No… but, 'Hide – "

"You're going to tell Ratch you're giving up on the twins with a 'but'?"

"Ironhide," Optimus Prime's voice fell across the argument like a heavy blanket, the sheer weight of his exhaustion making all who heard it feel guilty for their own part in it. Epps already felt pretty damn guilty and knew that Lennox did too. Prime raised a servo, bringing it to rest on Ironhide's shoulder. "As the Major said, our human allies have exhausted their resources. That is not an abandonment of the search, simply its completion."

Epps fists clenched on the back of the guard's chair and it was a struggle to listen to what the man tried to tell him and focus on the screen. Behind him, Lennox dropped back into his chair, rubbing the back of his neck. Epps winced. Will preferred to stand to speak to the 'bots, particularly when they were angry. Right now though, it looked like the major couldn't stop himself slumping. No kidding. The scant sleep the man had got lately, he had to be aching all over.

"Damn it, 'Hide." Lennox bit off the words. "We've pulled what CCTV we can find from the entire city. We've searched every satellite image we could get our hands on. Hell, I even diverted a nuclear submarine to search empty water! There's nothing more I can do. Even if I had the authority to put every cop in the city on this, they'd be searching for a needle in a haystack. Do you have any idea how many places there are that can hide a single sports car? Whoever took Sunstreaker they had him under cover and out of there long before we started looking. We could spend a decade raiding the chop shops within the city limits, across the state, across the whole country even, and still be no closer to finding him!"

Epps couldn't bring himself to look up. He clamped his lips shut before he could snarl the profanity that tried to escape them. Tapping the guard on the soldier and gesturing him to one side, he slipped into the man's chair, and concentrated on the anomaly in front of him in an attempt to shake loose the imagery.

Like the foul 'car-killer', the term 'chop shop' had taken on a whole different meaning since meeting the Autobots. The mere thought of grease-streaked garages littered with the wreckage of dismantled vehicles made him nauseous. The idea that Sunny might even now be held in one, chained in place and watching the sparks fly from cutting torches was horrifying. Worse still was the nagging fear that Sunstreaker might already be a mindless hulk, his processors and memories torn from that beautiful shell. Epps' troubled imagination could find no comfort in the chance the Autobot's complexity had defeated the organised gangs of car thieves. It was all too easy to imagine Sunny's yellow streaked with energon-pink as a metal cube fell from a crusher, or obscured by the muddy waters of some ditch or pond, left to rust until cold water finally flooded his spark chamber and extinguished him for good.

He was sure that similar pictures, far more vivid for the millennia he'd known the twins, were playing out in Ironhide's processor. He didn't blame the mech for being angry. He was pretty damn angry himself.

Judging by the heat in Lennox's voice, the major felt the same.

"Tell me, 'Hide! Tell me what else you want me to do, and if it's humanly possible I'll find a way to do it, but I can't keep chasing my tail. I've got a responsibility to every man and woman who serves with me to keep NEST functioning, and at the moment it's not coming close! Okay, so we can let this week's exercises slide, but we haven't even talked about the rumours coming up from South America or that last report from Poland!" Will's momentary fervour drained away, leaving him shaking his head. "I want to find him, Ironhide. But I can't make it happen by willpower alone. Ratchet's the only damn miracle worker on this base."

Ironhide stared at the gantry for a long moment before turning away. Arms folded across his chest-plates, the old weapons officer grumbled what sounded like a string of Cybertronian curses, not directed against the human but rather railing against the Universe as a whole.

Optimus Prime watched his old friend with dim optics, his glimmer of amusement at Lennox's last comment bittersweet and fleeting. Venting a sigh, the Prime looked down at the human on the gantry in front of him.

"Major, while I understand your point, and acknowledge the futility of keeping your personnel in the field, I must advise you that the Autobots will continue to search for our missing friend – at least until all hope is gone, and perhaps for some time even then."

Lennox gave a brisk nod, and Epps felt an equal lack of surprise. They hadn't for a second expected any different.

"Optimus, I'm just sorry…"

Prime raised a hand, stilling his counterpart's weak apology.

"You have nothing to apologise for, I assure you." The tall mech vented another sigh. "You are correct that NEST duties cannot be neglected. I shall endeavour to pay them due attention."

"You can start with this." No one expected Epps to speak up at that point. Epps hadn't really intended to himself, but he was fragged if he knew what he was looking at, and changing the subject seemed like a slagging good idea right now. At least, he thought so until human and Autobot alike turned to face the sergeant with varying degrees of surprise and curiosity. He waved a hand up at the monitor he'd spent the last few minutes studying. The picture there was unsteady, taken from a hand-held camera and, as the distortions in the field of view made clear, through a long-range lens. At first glance, the vehicle centre screen didn't seem to merit the effort. A big, black sedan car, it sat motionless, pulled to one side of the dusty desert road.

Lennox raised an interrogative eyebrow, frowning at his subordinate.

"It's a couple of miles down the road." Epps glanced up at Optimus and Ironhide. "Sitting just outside the range of those fancy perimeter sensors of yours." He gestured at the brief text report scrolling up the screen beside the image. "The guys on the gates down there say it's been hanging around near an hour. Just barely in view and not looking like it plans to go anywhere." He shrugged and then hesitated, rubbing his chin in a thoughtful gesture as he glanced up at Lennox. "Gibbs is on the gate guard. He says the only way it could have a stronger undercover-cop vibe would be if it was parked next to a donut stand."

Optimus Prime leaned forward to inspect the small monitor and even Ironhide seemed to be paying grudging attention. They cast both Epps and Lennox an inquiring look, not fully understanding the reference.

"This is your reformed youngling?" Ironhide asked with a frown.

"That's him." Epps leaned back in his chair. He waved a hand distractedly, not quite sure why the still, black car bothered him so much. "If he says the car's watching us, I'd take his word."

Ironhide's cannons whirred. The big mech folded them across his chest and scowled at the screen. "Doesn't look like anyone we know about. Could be a new arrival. Basic mass and frame size would suit a whole range of folks."

Lennox nodded briskly. "You think it's Cybertronian? Not just humans who've heard more than they ought?"

"There've not been any planet-falls we've tracked," Epps added dubiously. "Not in the last few days anyway, and an Autobot wouldn't have stuck around longer than that without saying anything, would they?"

Prime's optics narrowed, his expression betraying brief concentration before a live satellite view of the base's surrounds appeared on the screen, a graphic overlaying it to show the Autobots' sensor grid. The car, stark black against the dusty concrete in the high definition images, was sitting precisely in the hollow between two overlapping circles of sensor coverage, mere feet from being in range. A car width to either side, and they'd be able to scan it. As it was…

"Tell me that's coincidence!" Ironhide demanded. "If those are humans they know a truck-load more than anyone should about our defences."

"I would be equally concerned if the Decepticons have mapped our perimeter so precisely." Prime's unsettled look had morphed into a full-blown frown. "Although I doubt a spy would be so obvious in their chosen surveillance point."

"It really could be a coincidence, you know?" Lennox offered, not believing it himself. Folding his arms across his chest with a sigh, he glanced sidelong at Prime. "You want I should send a patrol out, see if they can spot any occupants? Just in case it really is just some jurisdiction poachers trying to figure out what we're about?"

The giant Cybertronian stood rock still for a moment before shaking his head. "No, Major. It remains possible that this is a Decepticon making an unusually bold move – either through their own arrogance or in the attempt to draw us out into a trap." The uncertain tone of his voice suggested he didn't believe it either. He vented a sigh. "Perhaps the simplest solution is merely to ask the question."

As he spoke, a new signal appeared on the NEST gantry's rolling readout of the public Cybertronian channels. Judging by the headers, Prime was using one of the most basic and general data channels – one that Autobot and Decepticon alike would use to exchange insults freely at the height of battle.

_- Unknown mech, please identify. Respond with designation, faction/neutral status and intent –_

There was a brief pause, although it no doubt appeared far longer to the two Autobots standing by the gantry. Epps was drawing in his breath to speak when an answer finally appeared.

_- Autobot requests permission to approach – _

Lennox blinked at the brief message. "Not humans then," he mused. Ironhide was peering more closely at the monitor showing a visual of the distant vehicle. Prime's frown grew deeper.

"Ratchet?" he spoke into thin air. "Would you join us in…?"

"Unless it's a matter of life and death, it can wait." The medic's voice cut him off ruthlessly, its tone flat. "Or you can come here. I'm not leaving medbay."

Prime didn't press. Ironhide shifted his weight a little to stand closer to his leader. The weapons master scowled at the screen.

"Not even Ratch has the sensors to tell Autobot from 'Con at that range, Optimus."

As Ironhide spoke, the coms pinged again, the statement repeating without change.

_- Autobot requests permission to approach – _

_- Autobot: identify. Send designation and confirmation – _

This time Ironhide snorted, glancing incredulously at Prime. "You're going to take this guy's word for his faction?"

"I asked for confirmation, Ironhide."

"And if it's an ID file we don't have on record?" Ironhide challenged. "It's not like we have a full database here. It's been hard enough keeping track of the Autobots we're still in contact with, let alone every stray 'Con, since we lost Cybertron. Unless it's someone we already know…"

The speculation was redundant. The reply came without the encrypted data file that would confirm a mech's identity. Instead it was just as blunt as the previous message.

_- NEST base Autobot: please identify – _

Epps rolled his eyes. "Why do I get the impression this could go on all day?"

Ironhide cycled his weapons, not disagreeing. "Whoever it is, he's a stubborn fragger."

Prime shook his head. "However I am not."

He spoke his Earth-translation name and, as he did, it appeared on the screen, broadcast to the newcomer. Accompanying it a Cybertronian name glyph denoted a quantum locked, unalterable file that was sendable only by a mech with the same spark resonance as that encoded within. The emphatic declaration of identity announced that this was Cybertron's Prime, leader of the Autobot Army and charismatic guardian of all that was left of the Cybertronian race.

The response was brief and to the point – a single name glyph that represented the mech's own identity file.

Epps didn't really expect the glyph to find a match in their limited database. His hands hovered over the keyboard ready for one of the 'bots to fill him in, and waiting to enter the human-equivalent name. He wasn't expecting Prime and Ironhide to fold down into their alt modes as one mech, heading to the hangar door at top speed, or for Ratchet to burst out of medbay a moment later, following them with sirens blazing. He was already blinking in surprise when the computer console beeped, a line of human-written code following the Cybertronian communications.

_Name glyph match found. Faction: Autobot. Designation: Prowl._


	7. Part Six

"Whoa!" Epps grabbed for the door handle, steadying himself with one hand while the other tugged on his seat-belt to check it. "Where's the fire?"

Lennox ignored his friend. He concentrated on his driving as he pushed the souped-up NEST jeep past one hundred miles an hour before even reaching the base perimeter. The Autobots were still ahead of him, but right now he was content just to keep them in sight.

"Seriously, Major, who is this guy? I've kind of heard them mention a Prowl but…"

"Prime's second in command." Lennox kept his reply blunt and to the point, still reeling a little himself. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Epps start in surprise, a low whistle escaping him. Lennox didn't take his eyes off the road, frowning through the windscreen. "They thought he was dead."

Ahead of them, Prime was braking to a halt, dust rising from his tyre tracks. Ironhide and Ratchet had moved to flank him, both engines revving hard. For a moment there was an impasse, semi truck, and two four-by-fours facing the slightly smaller, but still substantial, black limousine.

Lennox brought the jeep to its own squealing halt as the unmistakeable sound of transformation started up in front of them. He and Epps sat still, both of them wary of being stepped on by transforming mechs, or by the still unknown and presumably new-to-Earth newcomer.

The complex mechanical dance ended with three well-known figures looming above them to their left. Facing them, to the right of the jeep, an unfamiliar mech was unfolding with a slow movement that somehow seemed more graceful even than the usual Autobot ballet. Prowl was slighter than his three fellow officers, tall but without their bulk to his frame. Dusty black armour plates shifted aside, revealing dull, metallic-grey limbs and lending the mech a two-tone appearance. A scarlet horn-like structure, in the shape of a chevron mounted above his glowing blue optics, was the only splash of colour, and all the more vivid for that. It wasn't his most distinctive feature though.

The armoured panels that formed doors in Ironhide's alt mode and Ratchet's folded flat against their backs in bipedal form. A few other mechs, Bumblebee included, had doors that split into segments, some of which remained mobile on their backs, quivering a little when their owners were excited or flaring down and out when the mech postured for battle.

Prowl's doors were something else again. The two panels remained intact as the mech shifted, but instead of folding down out of the way, they moved up and outwards, remaining prominent and, judging by the way Prowl swept them up from their low position against his back until the tops were level with his helm, far more mobile than Bumblebee's smaller appendages. Maybe it was the indefinable air of fragility Prowl projected, maybe just the little he knew of the mech, but the graceful sweep of the doors framing Prowl's neutral faceplates put Lennox in mind of nothing so much as the wings of a Renaissance angel. Even then, this wasn't some harp-playing, ethereal being. This was a warrior, standing at the gates of Eden with fiery sword aloft.

He shook the image from his mind with an effort, wondering whether to climb out of the jeep. He hesitated to intrude as Optimus Prime took two steps forward, reaching out to lay a huge hand on each of the newcomer's shoulders. Prime's grip tightened, the hold as close as Lennox had ever seen to an embrace between two Autobots. His deep, ever-calm voice vibrated with suppressed emotion.

"Prowl. It brings me great joy to see you, old friend."

"Prime." The mech inclined his head. His voice was soft but even, betraying nothing of his reaction. "I must apologise for – "

"Nothing!" Prime's grip tightened enough that the mech's voice cut off with a quiet gasp. "I will accept no apologies from you."

Prowl's armour actually creaked under the force of Prime's hold and Optimus started at the sound. The Prime released Prowl's shoulders suddenly, his own expression disconcerted and a little alarmed as he realised he was hurting his friend.

"Prowl! I'm sorry…"

Ratchet had been staring, stunned, his optics bright and his expression curiously blank. Now the Autobot medic bustled forward. One hand reached out to steady the new mech, unbalanced after losing Prime's support, the other pulled an energon cube from subspace and pushed it into Prowl's servos.

"Drink!" Ratchet scowled, his voice gruff and firm. "What the slag do you think you're doing travelling alone? You fragging well know better."

Prowl yielded without a word, raising the cube to his lips and sipping with a slight grimace. He ignored Ratchet's question with an aloof unconcern that even Prime couldn't quite pull off. The medic's sharp look and growing frown bounced off dull armour as the newcomer turned away from the other's optics.

"Ratchet. Ironhide," he acknowledged quietly, before falling silent. At some point in the brief conversation his door-wings had dropped low, hanging, almost limp, down towards his waist. Now, they twitched, a momentary look of embarrassment crossing his faceplates as he found himself the centre of attention. Lennox realised he wasn't the only one watching the mech's mobile back appendages. He glanced up to see a frown on Ironhide's face and a sad look on Ratchet's as both mechs studied the panels. Prowl seemed to notice. He took another sip from the energon cube, winching both door-wings back up to frame his head as he did so, the gesture almost defiant.

Ironhide stepped forward, reaching out to take Prowl's forearm and holding it for a few seconds in a far-too-deliberately gentle grip.

"About time you got here," he said gruffly.

Prowl's wing-panels quivered and slumped a little despite his obvious efforts to keep them erect, his optics slid down and away from the older Autobot's.

"I was… delayed," he murmured. He sipped from the cube, apparently more to distract himself than for any other reason, before grimacing again and capping it with the flick of a digit.

Lennox frowned. The impression of fragility he'd got from Prowl was only growing stronger by the moment. The mech's black panels were dull and muted, lacking the shine he'd grown accustomed to on other Autobots. His grey plating showed hints of a more vibrant silver, long since faded. His movements were slow, his balance apparently fragile, and that was without even considering the door-wings that had once again collapsed down against his back. From the way the others were hovering, Lennox guessed their colleague's state was all too obvious to them. Prime's optics were on the energon cube. Lennox had seen Autobots down a cube like that in a single draft – and that was small bots like Bee and Jolt, not just the bulky warriors like Ironhide. Prowl seemed to be struggling to finish even a quarter of his.

Ironhide hovered beside the newcomer, hand rising and falling in an ineffective gesture of encouragement.

"Well, drink up," he urged with false jollity.

Prowl raised a brow-ridge, looking across at his old friend with a calm expression. "I'm afraid my energon capacity has never rivalled yours, Ironhide."

Ironhide seemed somewhat mollified by the terse answer. Ratchet, staying close, wasn't. His optics dimmed, his voice dropping to a growl.

"By which our genius of a tactician means he's been fuelling on such inadequate dregs that his fuel system's forgotten how to deal with decent energy."

Ratchet let the observation hang for a few moments, the deep and genuine concern of the three Autobots tangible in the air between them. At its focus, Prowl stood, apparently unmoved except for the quivering door-wings that vibrated low against his back. Prime's hand came up, hovering behind his second in a comforting gesture that the newcomer avoided, shifting slightly and pulling his door panels in close. Ratchet sighed, optics looking Prowl up and down yet again. The medic's expression was creased into a deep frown, as if he was seeing something he disliked, even beyond what the rest of them perceived.

"Let's get you back to medbay, Prowl. I want to check out these readings and take a _proper_ _look_ at your systems."

There was an emphasis in Ratchet's voice that seemed out of place, but no more so than the sharp look Prowl threw him. Then the new mech's expression settled back into the neutral mask Lennox was already coming to recognise. Prowl's simple nod was met with narrowed optics and an incredulous glare from his medic.

"That's it? No protest? No attempt to squirm out of it?"

"Are you implying that I often indulge in such illogical behaviour?" Prowl raised a brow ridge and for the first time Lennox saw a hint of humour in the newcomer. His door-wings shifted a little higher, and Prowl inclined his head towards the bulkier bot. "On the contrary, Ratchet, I would be pleased to accompany you, as soon as one of you clarifies a mere two points."

"Oh, really?" Ratchet asked, scepticism lacing his tone. Prime's engine rumbled, the taller mech drawing all attention to him.

"I will endeavour to answer any questions you might have."

"Then first, Optimus, perhaps you'd be kind enough to introduce me formally to your human allies?" Prowl tilted his head in yet another acknowledgement, this time looking down almost to his feet. "Major Lennox and Sergeant Epps have been remarkably patient."

Somehow it was no surprise to find the new mech could identify them by sight. Lennox could see the smile brightening Prime's optics, quirking his unmasked lip-plates.

"Of course. Major, Sergeant, I'm delighted to introduce you to the Second-in-Command of the Autobot Armed Forces, my Chief Tactical Officer and much-missed friend, Prowl."

Prowl's wings flicked out a little before settling and resuming their steady fall, his body language hard to read. Lennox had been around Autobots for long enough now though to guess that the tactician was uncomfortable with the warm introduction. The mech nodded.

"I am honoured to meet allies who have earned such respect from Optimus Prime."

Prowl's voice was as stiff and unreadable as his expression. Epps nodded politely in response, still a little wary of the unknown bot, and lacking Lennox's insight into his past. Lennox tried to lighten the atmosphere. He grinned, tapping his temple in a friendly salute.

"Pleased to meet you too, Prowl. I've heard a lot about you."

"Indeed."

The flat response lacked any warmth. Prowl straightened, something in his posture suggesting that his notoriety was unwelcome. Given the circumstances of it, Lennox guessed he could understand that. He was already kicking himself as Prowl's attention returned to his Prime.

Optimus raised a curious brow-ridge.

"You had a second question, Prowl?"

Prowl didn't hesitate. He met Prime's optics, his voice steady and firm.

"Yes. I'd like to know where Sideswipe is, and what has happened to Sunstreaker."

Silence stretched out for a long, long moment.

"How the frag did you…?" Ironhide's grumbling exclamation was cut off by a sharp wave of Ratchet's hand.

"The red hellion was loud enough to be heard half way across the solar system. There's a better question – how in the Pit did Sideswipe know you were that close?"

This time Prowl's wings held very still, his expression giving away nothing. It wasn't until Prime's engine vibrated in a low rumble that Prowl vented a very quiet sigh.

"Sideswipe and his brother have many faults, but they have been assigned guard duty - and engaged in less virtuous endeavours - often enough for setting perimeter sensors to become habitual. They have been aware of my presence since my arrival in this system." Prowl's wings flicked upwards as he seemed to remember them, and stayed up, held either side of his helm. "Sunstreaker and Sideswipe made a point of transmitting information packets about Earth to me on a regular one hundred and three point seven breem cycle thereafter – until the transmissions abruptly ceased. It is not in the twins' natures to give up on a campaign so quickly and easily… or to breach a promise of secrecy once their word is given. I was growing concerned even before Sideswipe's somewhat incoherent call."

"Every hundred and three point seven breems?" Ratchet repeated incredulously.

"I must confess a certain curiosity regarding the significance of the interval." Prowl's wings quivered, his brow ridges drawing together. "I've been unable to find a reference for it on the human information networks, despite extensive investigation." His wings flicked again. "It is most frustrating."

"Frustrating enough to bring you down to investigate?" Ironhide asked the question with a wry smile, one brow-ridge raised.

Prowl's absolute stillness spoke more for his shock at the implication than any more overt reaction. Ironhide chuckled and shook his head. "Our twin terrors know you too well, Prowl."

Ratchet and Prime seemed less amused.

"How long, Prowl?" Ratchet asked quietly. "How long since the twins detected your arrival?"

This time the pause lasted a little longer.

"Ten Earth days." Prowl looked down and to one side of the humans, not meeting anyone's eyes. His door panels dropped as low as Lennox had seen them, their tips trembling noticeably. "Coming here… I'm sorry, Optimus. I…"

Prime reached out, once more resting a hand on his second's shoulder, while Ratchet and Ironhide moved closer, one on either side of their friend as if trying to shield him from the world around him.

Prime spoke softly, blue optics never leaving Prowl's.

"You are not alone. This is hard, Prowl. I realise that. I can't conceive how hard it was for you to follow my call to this system, let alone down to this planet. I consider it a gift of Primus simply to see you again. I will not make you stay if doing so proves too difficult. But know this – you are not alone, and never will be."

Prowl said nothing. His optics slid away from Optimus Prime's, his drooping wings trembling. He nodded once, gaze still fixed on the ground. It was several seconds before he drew in a shallow vent.

"Sideswipe and Sunstreaker?" he repeated, voice shorn of all emotion.

"Medbay," Ratchet repeated firmly. "Come along, Prowl, and I'll tell you all about it."

* * *

Sideswipe lay in recharge on his med-berth. Ratchet didn't need to check the medical logs to know the front-line warrior hadn't moved since his medic's quick exit. He didn't need to check the mech's vitals either. An alarm would have sounded in his comm system at any significant deviation. He checked them anyway, scowling sadly at the readings before leaning down and whispering the familiar officer-level order:

"_Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sunstreaker._"

The coordinates were as meaningless as yesterday's and the day before's. He recorded them with a sigh and shook his helm.

"What happened?"

Ratchet's optics dimmed at the soft question and he vented hard. He didn't speak, just transmitted the medical file on Sideswipe. Turning to face Prowl, he watched his fellow officer's expression as the mech followed the cross-references through to the main incident report.

Prowl's optics flickered, his faceplates betraying surprise, confusion and concern to Ratchet's trained optics before settling into a slight frown of concentration. Ratchet shook his helm, his hand landing on Prowl's shoulder with a firm enough tap to capture the mech's attention.

"Don't even think of it. If you try and run your tactical processor you'll be on the berth next to him before you even boot."

Prowl didn't dispute his assertion and, despite his obvious concern for the twins, he didn't make the attempt. It was another sign. Part of the bigger picture that was becoming terribly clear. Ratchet had been a medic long enough to suppress his shudder. He wouldn't show the horror building inside him. Not until he was sure.

"Up you get." He made the order soft, waving the tactician to the berth beside Sideswipe's. Prowl moved without comment, his door-wings folding neatly behind him as he lay down on the polished steel surface. The medical displays beside the berth lit with red and yellow, the tactician's physical condition alarming to say the least. Prowl's fuel systems would need a complete overhaul. His door-wings needed easing, their joints and hinges worn and gummed up with dirt. His armour was showing signs of thinning and micro-fracture up and down his frame. His energy readings were almost frighteningly low.

Ratchet noted it all, some part of his processor already working on a rehabilitation strategy. His attention though was fixed on one reading, and one reading alone. He'd suspected it from his initial scans, and it was what had frozen him out there, unable to move until the creak of Prowl's armour broke through his shock. Whatever he'd expected when he saw his friend's name glyph on the comm, whatever he'd feared, he'd never imagined this. Even faced with the first realisation, he'd hoped against hope that he was wrong. Swearing inside, he reached for his more sensitive equipment, determined to be sure.

Prowl remained still and silent as Ratchet ran first one test and then a second and third. Finally the medic lifted the scanner away from his friend's chest-plates, and looked up, fuel tanks churning.

This was impossible. No… some mechs might have believed that. Some still did. But Ratchet had worked in Iacon and Simfur. He'd read the case histories. He knew better. Vanishingly rare, yes. Impossible? No.

"By now you'll be feeling it. You've got to have been running internal scans. The right protocols are active in your systems, and half of those are under conscious control." He vented a carefully shallow breath. "Prowl… I'm guessing you already know what I'm going to say here."

Prowl's expression was neutral, but his door-wings quivered low against his back and Ratchet had been through enough with the mech to read the quiet terror in his eyes. One slender hand came up to rest above his chest-plates, protective and possessive.

"I… Please, Ratchet, just tell me. Does my sparkling have a chance?"

There it was, open between them. Ratchet took a moment to recheck his monitors and study the speck of light orbiting Prowl's faltering spark before answering. He took a moment too long. Prowl pushed himself up on his elbows. His readings picked up, stress indicators lighting the monitors in still richer shades of red.

"I know I'm weak. I put him in internal suspension as soon as I was able! I thought it might help preserve him until I could see you. I can't…"

"Stop! Calm down." Ratchet made his voice even but firm. Already his automatic programming was preparing a sedative in his wrist mechanisms, ready to be administered. He didn't dare. Prowl's state was worrying him on a second-by-second basis. Right now, it was ninety-percent pure will power keeping the tactician on his pedes. The last thing the medic wanted was to disturb that fragile equilibrium. He grimaced, weighing up what he needed to say.

"Prowl, listen to me: you did the right thing." Given the circumstances, there was nothing else he could have done. "Our systems can keep a sparkling in stasis for a quarter vorn or more before allowing it to gestate… in normal circumstances."

It was an old programming quirk, a reminder that their CNA had developed on a world plagued by periodic energon shortages. In the Golden Ages, when energon flow was plentiful, the old programming had come close to dying out completely. The long eons of war and hunger since had reminded Cybertron's people what their distant ancestors had known – that their rare offspring were too delicate and precious to chance on happenstance.

Right now though, Prowl wasn't thinking of war or starvation. His optics were turned inwards. The Praxian mech shivered, his oh-so-prominent door-wings betraying his inner turmoil. He said nothing, but his entire posture spoke for him. These were far from normal circumstances. There was no point in pretending otherwise. Ratchet didn't sigh. He spoke with level precision.

"I am going to do everything I can to bring this sparkling to separation safely. Everything. I think I can, if you cooperate. But I'm not going to lie to you. The damage to your spark is severe, Prowl. The broken bond has left you weak and unstable. Your frame is drawing more power than your spark can produce. Your repair systems aren't handling your own problems, let alone the task of building a new protoform. If you try to actively carry this sparkling in the state you're in, neither of you will survive. I'm at least half sure that it's only having the sparklet resting against your spark that's keeping its beat close to regular now."

Prowl had relaxed back onto the berth as Ratchet spoke. His finger-servos rested on his chest-plates. His optics met Ratchet's, their glowing depths holding more pain than the medic could stand.

"This sparkling will never replace Jazz."

"Never." Ratchet agreed without hesitation. He forced himself to hold that pale gaze. "Nothing will ever replace Jazz. No one will expect that of you. He'll always be a hole inside you, and you'll miss him every day. But you already love this little one, Prowl, don't tell me otherwise. You could have let it gutter… let yourself fade… at any point in the last four decaorns. You came here instead."

The tactician answered him with silence, his helm dropping back and his gaze averted. Ratchet sighed.

"You're not alone any more, Prowl. But you're not well either. You need to give me – give yourself – time. This sparkling has a whole life ahead of him and I know you want him to live it, but you have to work with me, and you have to be patient."

Prowl's hand pressed down over his spark as if it pained him. It almost certainly did. He nodded slowly, a shudder rippling through his door-wings.

"I will do all you ask." He paused, glancing up at his medic. "I believe I'm entitled to request confidentiality."

Ratchet hesitated. "Optimus Prime…"

"Carries too much weight upon his shoulders," Prowl interrupted firmly. "My condition is already deeply impaired and Prime is aware of the fact. This additional concern can hardly affect his decisions further."

The mech's door-wings were drawn up high and taut, his voice certain. Ratchet stared at him, deeply dismayed that the mech intended to hide this from one of his closest friends. Prowl gazed back steadily, his voice quiet as he went on.

"If I succumb to my weakness… if I cannot do this, I know Optimus will grieve for my loss. I would not burden him with grief for my child."

It was a difficult argument to dispute. That didn't make it a good one. Ratchet's nod was slow and reluctant.

"If I feel there's a valid medical or tactical reason for Optimus to know, then all bets are off," he warned.

"Acceptable." Prowl pushed himself upright, servos spread against his berth to steady him as he swung his legs over the edge. "If you'll give me a schedule for initial repairs, I should report to Prime."

"Wait." Stepping forward, Ratchet caught Prowl's shoulder, trying to convey his compassion and support in that grip, hating himself for what he still had to ask. "There's one more thing I need to know."

Wheeljack's advance signal had been short on detail, wary of interception but not attempting to disguise the fact that Prowl was missing. Until today, Ratchet had been more focussed on the date than on the one other fact the engineer had conveyed. Prowl's condition, the sparklet's age, his evasiveness, they all added up to a picture that had set Ratchet's tanks roiling since his first scan of the new arrival. It was all he could do to keep the dread from his expression.

'Jack could have used any of a dozen terms to describe Prowl's disappearance. He'd only needed one. Wheeljack had used a Special Ops glyph that meant not only 'missing' but specifically 'missing whilst on reconnaissance'. Prowl had vanished while scouting a Decepticon base, on the day his spark-mate died, when he'd be vulnerable, unable to defend himself from… anything.

"Prowl, who is this infant's sire?"

Prowl stared at him. Ratchet watched the mech's expression, confused to see it torn between outrage and disbelief rather than the anguish he'd expected. The Praxian's door-wings came up sharply and flared to the sides. His optics blazed. He shrugged Ratchet's finger-servos off his shoulder, his voice icy cold.

"You think I'd betray Jazz before the echoes even fade?"

"Never! Betrayal didn't so much as flicker through my processor." Ratchet stood his ground, watching Prowl's expression closely, his own as calm as he could make it. "But you and I both know, Prowl, that an Autobot in Decepticon hands might not have a choice."

Prowl's anger gave way to confusion of his own. He frowned at Ratchet as if unable to comprehend his argument.

"I was never in Decepticon hands. Ratchet, I don't understand. The sparklet's sire is Jazz and no one else."

There was no deception or distress in Prowl's pale blue optics. Ratchet gestured the mech back onto the med berth, his spark clenching as he looked into a gaze that spoke of nothing but weariness and deep denial. He drew a sharp breath in through his vents, his optics not leaving the fragile mech in front of him. He'd have to be careful, so very careful.

"We heard from Wheeljack an orn back," he said quietly.

That got a reaction. Prowl looked up sharply, his wings quivering.

"Bluestreak?"

"'Jack said they were both fine." Ratchet didn't hesitate to reassure the mech. Prowl slumped, his optics dimming as he shuddered in pure relief. Ratchet patted his friend's shoulder in a gesture of understanding before pressing on. "They're on the way. But Prime will need to know what happened. How were you separated from them?"

"I'd intended to report to Prime himself."

"Uh-huh. Well, I asked first."

Prowl settled back against the berth, his faceplates still wary and showing his confusion… and his weariness. The lack of fight spoke volumes for his current weakness.

"I was scouting a cave-system, looking for a back way into a Decepticon outpost. I found a promising spur in the system, its entrance well-hidden." The tactician's optics dimmed, shaking his head. "I calculated a reasonable probability that the residents may have overlooked it in their perimeter defences. I was deep in the cave network when…"

Prowl's voice died away, a thin keen escaping before he could stifle it. He turned his helm, his optics gazing sightlessly at the concrete floor. Ratchet hesitated, his hand coming up to comfort Prowl and then dropping away before touching him, knowing no comfort was possible. Several seconds passed before the tactician shuddered, shaking himself.

"The bond shock knocked me offline. I was in stasis-lock for a little more than five orns." The two abrupt sentences fell into silence. "When I emerged from the cave system I found the area swarming with a Decepticon response team, assessing and repairing the rather thorough demolition that I attributed to Wheeljack's distinctive hand. I surmised that Wheeljack and Bluestreak had raided the outpost in an attempt to establish my whereabouts after I failed to return, and were forced off-world by the Decepticon response. After a brief survey to locate any evidence of their actions and possible destinations, I also left."

Ratchet stared at the mech.

"You were unconscious, alone, for five orns?"

Prowl didn't answer, and he didn't need to. Even Ratchet knew the question was redundant. The medic cycled his vents, trying to find a way to phrase what he needed to say.

"Prowl, the two of you were separated for so long… too long." He heard the keen rising in his own voice and fought it back. He needed to be professional here. Prowl deserved that from him. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, but it is impossible for you to have merged sparks with Jazz in the decaorn either side of that day in the cave. My best estimate is that the sparkling was conceived in that interval."

He expected shock from the tactician, or perhaps incomprehension – the same blank denial that Ratchet had already diagnosed. He didn't expect the look of realisation, or the small, sad smile that played across Prowl's lips.

"You fear that I was assaulted whilst stasis locked."

Ratchet's spark clenched at the calm statement. It was the only explanation he could see, the only thing that made sense in this nightmare of a war.

"Scan the spark frequency, Ratchet. Scan my infant and tell me what you see."

Ratchet didn't need to run a new scan. It was one of the standard checks – recording the frequency of the spark resonating against Prowl's as a baseline measurement for future development. It hadn't even occurred to him to look at the result, beyond checking for any warning of irregularities. Now he looked… and stared.

Jazz and Prowl had always been close in spark frequency. Close enough that the chances of another mech coming between them was one in a million, if not more. It was just part of what made their bond so strong. The sparklet split the difference between them perfectly, nestling against Prowl's spark with a frequency near identical to his own.

With numb fingers, Ratchet set a probability matrix running, trying to determine the possible harmonics of the sire's spark, and knowing before he did so that he could count the code of every mech who'd ever existed, and the chances of anyone but Jazz being this sparkling's co-creator would still be vanishingly small.

"How...?"

Prowl smiled, tired and sad. "I learnt long ago that nothing Jazz set his spark to was impossible. You believe we were not together, and yet, there was one moment when Jazz's spark and mine were in contact as deep and intimate as any we have shared. We hovered on the brink of the Matrix, both torn from our frames, both afraid and grieving. Faced with our end, in a moment beyond hope, my bond-mate pleaded for a miracle, that I might survive. Primus heard his plea. My spark returned to my frame. Jazz's could not. But when I awoke, I discovered I was no longer completely alone. Jazz wanted me to live. He ensured that I would have no choice but to make the attempt."


	8. Part Seven

"Prowl." Optimus Prime turned as his medic and his long-absent first lieutenant joined them on the hangar floor. His greeting was warm, his optics bright with pleasure.

His second in command met his gaze and that warm glow faltered. There was a long shadow cast across their reunion, and they both knew its lithe shape. The Prime neither deserved nor expected forgiveness in his old friend's optics, but he saw understanding and an acceptance Optimus himself was still striving for. Prowl didn't have the luxury of denial. He'd never be able to convince himself their missing third-in-command was just out of sight, that music and laughter and a sharp insightful mind would yet return to them.

Looking at Jazz's bondmate, Optimus couldn't cling to his own denial. He felt the pain and guilt of Jazz's loss anew, and then a new twinge of guilt for his self-indulgence, knowing his pain must pale into insignificance compared to Prowl's.

"Optimus." There was no accusation in Prowl's optics or in his soft voice. The Praxian stepped forward to stand at his Prime's right side, both taking comfort in the familiarity. He inclined his helm, first to Ironhide and then to the humans on the command gantry. His sharp red chevron framed the blue glow of his optics, and his door-wings were steady, if not held high. "I have much to tell you, and much to learn of your position here."

Prime blinked, his optics cycling through a reset as he considered that. There were so many ways he could respond to Prowl's statement – so many questions to ask that they piled up in his vocaliser. Only one command escaped.

"Report."

Prowl nodded, a small smile showing on his faceplates as his Prime trusted his judgement rather than chasing minutiae.

"I last had contact with Ultra Magnus and his division slightly more than a vorn ago, and with Xanthium a little less than that. Amongst other meetings in recent vorns, I encountered Mirage, Hound and Trailbreaker on my journey here, and remained with them for a few orns before departing. Others remain out of contact, or are known to me only by hearsay. However, while our forces remain scattered, I believe I have reasonable tactical information, based on updates within the last one point three vorns, for a fraction in excess of eighty percent of the surviving Autobot army."

The tactician allowed that to sink in, his expression betraying a familiar hint of satisfaction at Optimus's surprise. The Prime's optics dimmed, relief flooding through him. His frantic - necessary, but frantic nonetheless - pursuit of the All Spark had torn him out of contact from all but his travelling companions. His knowledge of the wider army had been limited to the occasional signal they'd been able to intercept, and the still rarer snippets of information Jazz could glean from an overstrained bond. He'd hoped and prayed that Prowl might retain more of a grasp on current affairs, but it was all too easy to imagine chaos spreading unchecked through their ravaged forces.

He nodded his acknowledgement and his thanks, letting a smile show on his faceplates.

Prowl echoed it, showing just the merest glimmer of a smile in return. It faded into an equally faint frown.

"I will upload the appropriate personnel data to your network as soon as I have been able to fully review its formatting structure and revise its security protocols." The tactician ignored Ratchet's snort and the cycling of Ironhide's optics. He went on before their human colleagues even realised there was offence to be taken. "Prime, the full re-muster your message ordered will not be a rapid affair. I believe it may be three vorns before such a gathering exceeds ninety percent completeness. However, my current understanding of the tactical position is that the Autobot army contingent present on Earth as a function of time will retain numerical superiority over incoming Decepticons for most, if not all, of that period."

That got an exclamation of relief from Major Lennox – one that bordered on the profane - and Optimus couldn't help offering his own silent echo: a murmur of thanks to Lord Primus for the unexpected boon. No doubt the full tactical analysis would follow this briefing. Prowl's offering had been cautious, but he wouldn't have made the suggestion if it hadn't carried a substantial probability.

Prowl's door-wings twitched, a strained expression flickering across his faceplates for a moment before his blank mask took its place. His door-wings straightened, their tips spreading in what was clearly a conscious attempt to keep them steady.

"When… when I felt… when I heard…" Prowl shook his helm, abandoning the sentence. "I transmitted instructions for Ultra Magnus to assume command of the rear-guard, until and unless he received instructions to the contrary from you, Prime. I also suggested that he established a more effective communications relay between Earth and his current location when resources and personnel are available. However, I fear that won't be soon."

The all-too-mobile door-wings wilted. Prowl vented a soft sigh, his optics several shades dimmer than when he had started.

"I have attempted to remain in contact, Optimus, but I'm afraid that in the last few decaorns…"

Optimus reached out, the hand on Prowl's shoulder intended to steady his Second, both physically and with an offer of futile comfort. He could feel the tension under his large servos, and had to resist the impulse to tighten his grip. The echo of Prowl's armour creaking under his effusive welcome, all too loud in his memory, was enough to still him. It was something of a relief that his friend didn't shrug off the gesture. Even that small crumb of positivity burned to ashes as he realised that Prowl seemed to need the support as much as he needed the sympathy.

Prowl cycled his optics and then his vocaliser. He shook his helm.

"If you have queries about any particular individuals or vessels – "

"He can wait until you're more rested." Ratchet's intervention was almost a snarl. The medic scowled, his clenched fists resting on his hips as he glowered at their second in command. "Unless Unicron's going to turn up on our doorstep tomorrow, Prowl, Prime can wait another day to hear about it, and a few scans isn't half-way to what I want to get done before you strain yourself."

Prowl's optics cycled for the second time in as many minutes, their glow more tenuous by the second. He shook his helm, and Prime braced against the perceptible swaying of his friend's frame.

"Reviewing the data on the Twins must take priority."

The conflict on Ratchet's faceplates was painful to watch. Ironhide's cannons cycled, the movement mute testimony to his unease. Optimus Prime just nodded, eager to push the discussion forward as much for his lieutenant's sake as his front-liners'.

"Initial thoughts?"

"The prevailing hypothesis – that Sunstreaker has fallen into the control of human car thieves rather than Cybertronian forces – is strongly supported both by medical evidence and more circumstantial features of this incident."

To one side, Prime could see disappointment colour Lennox's expression. Prowl's analysis was hardly new, and brought them no closer to focusing their search. His Second, of course, was well aware of that. Prowl inclined his helm, hitching his door-wings a fraction higher.

"The major's report makes it very clear that tracking a single stolen vehicle – even one of Sunstreaker's perceived monetary value – is non-trivial. However, there are some significant deviations in the twins' behaviour pattern _before_ the crisis point that merit further investigation."

"Their behaviour _before_ Sides keeled over?" Ironhide frowned, glancing from Prowl to Ratchet and Prime. "It's not like Sunny went out looking to get stolen."

Prowl crossed his arms across his chest-plates, one brow-ridge rising. "Then tell me, Ironhide. What _did_ he go out looking for?"

* * *

Autobots lined the corridors as Ratchet led the way to the twins' quarters. They weren't overt about it, clustering in twos or threes and glancing over their shoulder armour rather than staring outright. The attempt at subterfuge was weak at best. Prowl knew precisely how many Autobot soldiers were on Earth at this time, how many were on duty, and how small the chances were of encountering every one of the remainder in a single walk through the NEST base.

He nodded to the mechs he knew, reserving a twitch of his door-wings and a small smile for the few, like Bumblebee, that he knew well. The rest he acknowledged briefly, giving them a chance to see Prime's legendary lieutenant standing in front of them as steel and energon rather than mere hearsay.

Optimus filled the corridor close behind him and even Ironhide's bulk seemed less imposing by comparison. The two of them carried Sergeant Epps and Major Lennox, the pair still an enigma to Prowl but their right to be present incontestable.

Ratchet hesitated as they reached their destination. His optics strayed from the door to one side, as if he could see through the walls to where Sideswipe lay. It wasn't the first time Prowl had noted the behaviour since his arrival. He wondered whether he should be flattered that Ratchet was prepared to leave his unconscious patient's side, or alarmed that his own condition merited such attentiveness. Ratchet didn't give him time to speculate. Venting a sigh, the medic entered his codes and overrode the door-lock.

The room assigned to Sideswipe and Sunstreaker was fairly large - officer's quarters according to the base plans Prowl had already studied. Given that two mechs were sharing the space, it still leaned towards cramped.

The first thing Prowl took in was an explosion of colour and imagery. Every wall had been covered in bright posters, many of them photographic image captures of animals accompanied by slogans that - judging by context alone - were presumably considered humorous. If so, they only underscored how much Prowl had yet to learn about his new comrades-in-arms.

Overhead, inflated balloons hung from the ceiling, their petro-chemical based films tinted in striking primary colours. Stepping in towards the centre of the room, Prowl felt grateful for the first time to realise he was carrying his door-wings low. There was enough of an obstacle course underfoot that worrying about a second, catching his upswept sensor panels, was beyond him.

A scatter of human debris littered the floor, ranging from sleek consumer electronics to bulky plastic constructions intended as playthings for human young. Some showed signs of use, others might have been discarded virtually untouched. A few were small enough that Prowl found himself wondering how Sideswipe had held the things without crushing them, let alone manipulated them.

And yes, it would have been Sideswipe. The near-random scatter, the fascination with human culture, commerce and interests, virtually screamed the red twin's name. The influence of Sunstreaker was subtler but there if you knew to look for it.

Sideswipe's posters presented a riot of random colour on first glance. On second, that impression faded. Their subject matter might be eclectic, but their positioning was far from random. The backgrounds and colour themes were carefully arranged to form a sweeping arc from one side of the room to the other, the posters' subject reduced to actors against that rainbow backcloth. One wall was empty entirely of the human overload. Its military-grey plasterboard had been left barren, save for a single sketch, centrally positioned.

Prowl tilted his head, turning slightly and confirming his guess: the line drawing of the All-Spark, in all its intricate glory, was positioned precisely so as to be in the optics-line of a mech lying on the left hand berth Sunstreaker preferred.

Frowning a little, Prowl turned his attention to that side of the room, flaring his door-wings as his sensors played across the storage container beside the berth.

His optics cycled, his door-wings rising before he could conceal his surprise.

"Sunstreaker is painting again?"

Ratchet shrugged, his frown growing a little deeper as he turned to Ironhide with a raised brow ridge. Standing in the doorway alongside Prime, both wary of stepping on the twins' scattered belongings, Ironhide shrugged too.

"Looks like it. There's a couple of canvases in the locker. Pigments too." The weapons-mech's cannons rotated, close enough to Lennox's head that the human's pulse picked up perceptibly. "Prowl, I told you: we've looked in here. It's not like a couple of slagging arty abstracts are going to tell us where Sunny went."

Prowl stared at him, his door-wings spreading in his surprise.

"Prowl?"

Optimus rumbled his name with a note of caution. Prowl raised a hand, stilling the question unspoken. He turned, stepping with infinite care as he negotiated his way to the locker that held Sunstreaker's sparse belongings.

"In all the time I have known him, Sunstreaker has only painted when he feels a deep emotional understanding of his subject or a need to develop one." He crouched, studying the lock on the container, and unsurprised to realise Ironhide had already broken it. Taking hold of the lid, he glanced back at his comrades. "He has never, _never_, painted a truly abstract canvas."

With care, he reached in and lifted out the three medium-sized canvases wedged against one side of the locker. Ironhide had exaggerated. Two of the canvases were figure-studies - one of a pair of human children playing a game at their father's feet, the other of Optimus Prime standing alone in front of the NEST base, blue optics distant as he gazed up at the night sky. Prowl studied each in turn, considering them carefully before laying them down on Sunstreaker's empty berth. Then he turned to the third.

At first even he thought Ironhide must be correct. The painting certainly looked like an abstract art work, streaks of colour and light running across a dark background. If there were shapes behind the light, it was only as suggestions, shadows in the darkness, formed from careful strokes and shades of black. Most of the streaks were white or a bright red. A few differed - flares of neon blue or an equally vivid green.

Prowl gazed at it until it felt as if the image were burned into his optics, his processor aching as he tried to understand what their lost soldier had meant by it.

"Prowl?" It was Ratchet this time, his voice a little raised as if this wasn't the first time he'd called the name. Given that Prowl's auxiliary systems were taking every opportunity to power down and rest, that was quite possibly true. He'd got out of the habit of keeping his audio receptors active, over decaorns alone where no sound existed to be heard. Prowl dragged his optics from the canvas with an effort, his weary systems leaving behind a distorted after image as his processor lagged.

He froze, turning sharply back to look at the painting and only half aware that Ratchet caught his arm to steady him as he did so.

"Not abstract," he said firmly.

"Looks pretty damn abstract to me." Lennox and Epps had moved into the room, lifted by Ratchet onto the berth where they could see the canvas that engrossed the newcomer. Now the major shook his head, tilting it as if the subtly different view could show him what Prowl had seen.

"Distorted, not abstract," Prowl repeated. "Major, have I your permission to access the NEST personal databases?"

Technically, Optimus could have granted that permission instead of his co-commander. In actual fact, Prowl didn't need it, and had already been in and out of the NEST systems half a dozen times before even entering the base. Lennox probably knew that too, or had guessed it already. Even so, the request was a recognition of Lennox's joint command, and Prowl was enough of a diplomat to understand the importance of that.

Lennox's eyes flickered from Prowl to Prime and back again, the frown on his face considering. He gave a brief nod.

"Help yourself. Do you need access codes, or has Prime already installed yours?"

There was no need to answer that question directly. "I have access."

Prowl's optics turned distant as he tunnelled into the system, using a combination of Jazz's codes, his own, and Special Ops-spec system-hacks that circumvented the bulk of the rather crude security protocols. Some fraction of the images he searched appeared on the room's large monitor screen, casting its glow across the assembled men and mechs. It took microseconds for Prowl to locate the system directories allocated to Sunstreaker for data storage or back-up of whatever personal files he considered important. It took almost ten times that for Prowl to circumvent the extra security Sideswipe had installed for his brother - the red twin's erratic programming style harder to process than the more conventional firewalls.

Sunstreaker, it seemed, had a preference for terse directory labels, and file structures which - while logical - were somewhat opaque to a third party. Prowl considered it carefully, weighing the evidence against the warrior he knew well, anxious not to access more of his soldier's private files than he must. Thoughtfully, flashing the code on the screen so Prime and the others could follow his reasoning, he set an image search algorithm with very specific criteria.

He found the directory he was searching for on his third attempt. The image capture of Optimus Prime, indexed and annotated in Sunstreaker's unique style, was almost certainly not the sole inspiration for his painting, but it was nonetheless a clear influence. Several other images in the directory appeared to relate to the painting - reference shots of the NEST base and the unfamiliar constellations in this world's night sky. If similar reference shots existed for the study of human offspring, they resided elsewhere, perhaps in the subdirectory that was twin to this one. That didn't matter to Prowl. The five individual photographs, each showing streaks of light cast in vivid contrast against a dark background, did.

"References for the 'abstract' painting," he noted with satisfaction, not even noticing when he swayed a little as he spoke.

Ratchet was leaning forward, one hand now gripping Prowl's elbow tightly but his frown firmly fixed on the images.

"Those are optic captures," the medic confirmed, his tone confused. "Time lagged processing - perhaps 1.5, 1.6 second sequences?"

Lennox walked forward to the edge of Sunstreaker's berth, craning to look up at the screen from his awkward angle. Frowning, he folded his arms.

"So Sunny took photos to work from in his spare time? Where's this getting us?"

Prowl wasn't aware of choosing to sit on the berth. He only realised Ratchet had manoeuvred him into that position when he saw Epps and Lennox adjust their footing to better ride out the vibrations. His door-wings, idling now that his concentration was on the screen, had slumped. His peripheral systems were trying to save power; the drain from his processor and social interaction algorithms were higher than they had been for decaorns. He was truly riding the edge of exhaustion, but this was important, and the expression on Prime's face told his lieutenant that Lennox wasn't the only one confused.

"These studies… they're each taken in the same place - the background light patterns are constant and distinctive - but with a dynamic foreground. And they're time-indexed across three distinct days." Even to himself, Prowl's voice sounded wrong, a buzz of noise blurring it as his processor sent too weak a signal to his vocaliser. He shook his helm, trying to concentrate against the increasing number of error messages from his depleted systems. "This is a location Sunstreaker visited multiple times, within a half-orn of his disappearance. If the images can be processed to recover the background…"

"They will be analysed." Optimus Prime's deep rumble made it not just a firm intention but a fact. "Prowl, report to medbay."

Prowl opened his mouth to protest, more out of habit than anything else. A sharp slap across his nearest door-wing from Ratchet, followed by a quick grab by the medic to stop his patient overbalancing, stopped him. Prowl cycled his optics in an attempt to focus them, a little startled that even a mech as trusted as Ratchet had caught him by surprise.

"You're running on fumes, and I still have tests to run. You'll recharge in medbay and like it, understand? I want you on an energon line for a few hours until your systems stabilise, and then a full recharge cycle before doing anything else."

Prowl vented a sigh, the exhalation soft but still very obvious in the quiet of the twins' room. He could still work from the medbay, and Ratchet was correct that he needed rest and energon urgently. This wasn't the time and place to argue.


	9. Part Eight

"So that's the famous Prowl?"

"That's Prowl," Ironhide confirmed simply.

Epps sighed as he mounted the metal stairs, rubbing a hand back over his shaved scalp.

"Man, this is fragged," he muttered.

Beside the gantry, looming ominously, Ironhide grunted, not able to dispute the assessment. The human officer reached behind him, pulling a chair along the gantry until it was beside the one Lennox had already claimed. The photographs Prowl had identified were already in the hands of analysts, and Prowl himself in Ratchet's forceful care. The rest of them had decamped back to the command gantry more out of habit than any real need. Evening twilight was starting to gather pace over the base. By rights, Lennox and Epps should have gone off duty an hour before, and the Autobots too should be taking downtime. All of them were too keyed up after the events of the day to even consider that option.

Epps dropped into his seat without taking his eyes off the mechs in front of him. "I feel for him, really I do, but, Prime, I gotta ask: why'd you let this happen? The bond thing. Way I understand it, wouldn't it just paint a target on their back for the 'cons? A get one, get one free type thing?" Lennox winced, and even Epps' pupils dilated a little, the sergeant able to see his own lack of tact. He might only have learned the details of Prowl's situation today, but he could hardly miss the mech's importance to the 'bots he knew. The human swallowed hard and stuck to his guns, pinning Prime with a serious expression. "How can it make sense to let your second and third get tied together like that?"

Optimus Prime's optics brightened, the subtle shift of his plating betraying amusement to Ironhide's trained optics.

"You appear to assume I had a choice?"

Epps shrugged. Lennox blinked. The major shook his head, scepticism written through the body language the Autobots were still learning to interpret. He leaned back in his own chair, tilting his head up at the mechs above him.

"Come on! They were your lieutenants, Prime. I know you were close to Jazz, and from what I hear this Prowl is kind of a stickler for rules. Even if you don't have fraternisation regs, you can't tell me they didn't at least ask permission?"

"Jazz could be a bad influence." Ironhide snorted through his vents and letting his arm cannons charge and discharge. "He was a natural sneak. And our Prime isn't the brightest spark when it comes to relationships."

Prime blinked at him, his optics dimming then brightening. "Prowl and Jazz were rather subtle pursuing their courtship." Only the Prime's deep and abiding aura of dignity prevented his tone from being defensive. "It was some time before I noticed they had become close."

Ironhide shook his helm, amused.

"I seem to remember you being less than impressed, when you did." He ignored Prime's uncomfortable shift and let his lip-plates quirk in a broad smile as he looked down at their young comrades. "The mechs had been courting longer than your kind have lived in cities, and Prime raises the wisdom of their 'new understanding' in a staff meeting."

The humans' eyes widened. A low breath whistling out between Epps' lips.

"What did they say?"

"Prowl offered Optimus a time for a private discussion later that orn, and moved on to the next item on the meeting schedule." The new voice startled them. Ratchet walked up to the group from the direction of medbay, shrugging his shoulders, and tilted his helm toward Prime. "Always kind of wondered what he said to you that took it off the agenda for good."

Optimus Prime stilled, the amusement or even resignation Ironhide expected to see absent. The weapons master frowned as his Prime's attitude became one of shame and regret. Optimus nodded slowly.

"I spoke to Jazz and Prowl separately and then together. Prowl presented evidence that both he and Jazz had never been more efficient and effective, that morale amongst our Autobots was higher, and that our tactical and Special Ops departments were working at an unprecedented level of cooperation and success. He stated honestly that he and Jazz were extremely happy and that the knock on effects of any forced separation would be catastrophic for them, for their contribution to our fight and ultimately to our cause as a whole." Prime paused. "Jazz pointed out that, as Prime, I would be the first target on any battle field. Beyond that, any Decepticon assault plan based on seniority, immediate threat, disruption potential, battlefield tactics, long-term strategy, confirmed kill count, vengeance for past battles or impact on morale would target either Jazz or Prowl or both already. Bonding could hardly make either a more tempting target."

"Whoa…." Epps sat up straight and, beside him, Lennox shook his head. The major's eyes drifted towards the sealed door of the repair bay, a new respect in his expression. Ironhide glanced away, his tanks rumbling. Prowl had always projected a deceptively calm demeanour that belied his very real abilities. After seeing him today though, looking so broken and ill, even the Autobots who knew him well might struggle to believe the tactician was the dangerous mech they knew.

Ratchet shook his helm, fixing Optimus with a firm look. Ironhide followed his friend's gaze, and the humans looked too, all of them intrigued to realise Prime had closed his battle-mask, concealing all but hints of his expression.

"And now tell us the rest," the medic suggested, his gruff voice just short of making it an order.

Prime vented a sigh, his optics straying back towards medbay before drifting away from all present.

"When I remained unconvinced, my officers reminded me of the core tenet of the Autobot cause: that freedom is the right of all sentient beings. They told me things I was hardly willing to hear – reminding me that our war had already spanned more than a generation, and that at least a second generation would inevitably suffer its travails, assuming that second generation ever came to be. They reminded me that our civilian population had been wiped out almost to the last, and that each battle had become more vicious, more destructive than the last. And then they told me that if the Prime had fallen so far from himself as to deny his mechs a simple expression of love, if our battles were all that mattered and all that there was to come, without hope for a future or freedom in the present, then they would be forced to seriously reconsider their roles in the army, and whether their duty, their future and the future of the mechs they cared for lay elsewhere."

The humans sat solemnly, not understanding the significance of Prime's announcement. The Cybertronians present could hardly miss it. Ironhide froze in shock, his vents pausing and his fans loud as he stared at the Prime. Beside him, Ratchet was scarcely less stunned.

"They threatened to leave the faction?"

"They'd have broken their Autobot oaths?"

The questions overlapped, both equally horrified. Ironhide's vocaliser choked around his words, his expression scarcely able to believe he was saying them. Prime raised a hand, the gesture sharp and his expression creased into a frown above the battle-mask.

"If I had refused their right to share their sparks… If I had done that to two officers who had given everything they had and everything they were to a war I helped create… If I was truly leading my people into a mire of destruction, without hope or a future… If I was willing to destroy the lives of two of my closest friends based on assumptions and arbitrary prejudices they'd already disproven… If I had breached all that I held sacred and all that I'd led a civilisation into fighting for… If all that were the case, then Prowl and Jazz would have walked out with their oaths unbroken and their Autobrands intact. They'd have taken half our army with them. And_ they'd have been right to do so_."

The emphasis in Prime's voice sent a shiver through his audience. They could hear the echo of Prime's anguish, still raw after eons to consider his officers' words.

"Ratchet, Ironhide, if I'd banned that bond, or worse still, ordered them to break it, as I truly considered doing, then I'd no longer have been worthy of the title Prime, and any who still followed me would not have been fighting for freedom, or justice, or for any of the principles to which the Autobot oath is sworn, but only out of the same blind loyalty that Megatron demands in his megalomania."

Ironhide's cannons whirred, his agitation manifest in the involuntary movement. Ratchet scowled at Prime, the medic's expression twisted between anger and distaste. It was hard to grasp, that threat from two of the most committed and self-sacrificing Autobots anyone had ever known. Harder still with one of them gone to the Matrix, and the other broken but still struggling on even as he fell into the Pit.

Lennox looked between the Autobots, his expression grim, before looking up at Prime with an understanding the Autobots could scarcely credit in one so young.

"Sometimes the bravest and most loyal thing an officer can do is tell his commander when he's wrong."

Prime nodded. "Primus gifted me with two of the bravest and most loyal mechs ever to spark from the Matrix." His optics dimmed. "I have deeply missed their council."

Ironhide shifted his weight from one pede to the other, understanding taking the edge off his anger. He'd never, in all the millennia he'd known them, questioned his friends' commitment to the Autobot cause. It was both a relief and a shock to realise that the long-past conversation Optimus described did nothing to change that.

A rattle of metal wheels against the steel gantry drew Autobot eyes down to their human comrades. Lennox was standing, his chair pushed back against the gantry railing as he paced a few steps, detouring around Epps' outstretched legs. The major's fingers tapped against the console in a nervous pattern. It was familiar behaviour when their loss was mentioned.

Humans and Autobots had fought side by side in a dozen battles since Mission City. They would trust one another with hearts and sparks, counting them friends as well as colleagues. None of that changed the fact that Jazz died defending the fragile and inexperienced newcomers… and Lennox knew it.

The human swallowed back the guilt. He tilted his head to look up at Prime, putting a positive note in his voice. "Well, you've got Prowl back now, right?"

Optimus Prime looked at him. Just looked.

"Ratchet, your report?" Optimus's optics remained locked to the human, his faceplates impassive above the battle-mask. Ironhide looked from his Prime to the medic, rumbling uneasily.

"Details are between me and Prowl."

"Of course."

Ratchet vented a harsh sigh.

"He's in a bad way, Prime. The state he's in, it's a miracle that he's held off system failure this long. A miracle and more strength than I can imagine having in his position. He made it here, which means he's already one case in thousand. But, Optimus, it's barely more than ten decaorns since he lost his bond-mate. Statistically he's got less than a ten percent chance of making it through the next quarter vorn. Less than one mech in fifty in his position will survive a vorn." The medic paused long enough for that to sink in, his optics scanning his Prime and Ironhide and flicking over Major Lennox for good measure. The human's fists had clenched by his sides, the grim expression on his face mirroring that of the Autobot officers.

Concrete scuffed under Ratchet's feet and the mech glanced back towards the repair bay before going on. "There are complications here I can't go into, Prime, but Jazz wanted his bond-mate to live and I think Prowl intends to respect that. He's weak, very weak, and we could lose him to anything from a bad virus to sudden spark failure, but he'll want to do his job. You can have him on light duties – very light duties – after I've done some work and he's had some decent fuel and a lot of recharge."

Prime raised a brow-ridge, his battle-mask folding back out of the way to reveal a pensive expression. Ironhide's arm cannons cycled and the gantry creaked as he leaned a fraction of his considerable weight against it.

"You realise he's already interfacing with the base data and intelligence network?"

Ratchet scowled. "I've spoken to him about that." The medic waved a hand. "The mech's dedicated, not stupid. He knows his limits."

Ironhide couldn't hide his smirk, Ratchet sounded as if he was at least half trying to convince himself. Even the humans could hear the humour in the comment. Then Ratchet raised tired optics and all amusement drained away.

"Hide… any other time and I'd have our slagging tactician in stasis for his own good. Right now though… if Prowl can find any clue about Sunny, that's a risk we're going to have to take."

Each careful to avoid the others' eyes, Autobot and human frowned into nowhere. None of them could disagree.

* * *

Medbay was quiet when Ratchet returned from the command meeting, and the lights were dimmed. For a second or two he dared to hope Prowl might actually be resting, even as he knew how unlikely that was. Then he saw the two pools of dim light that reflected from the human-built ceiling.

Sideswipe's optics were lit, but there was no focus behind their faded glow. The warrior's torso and limbs were disarrayed, their movement betraying his pained writhing. Murmurs spilled intermittently from his vocaliser, some of them names or incoherent pleas, others no more than electric static. Ratchet murmured in return, moving to the twin's berth side and touching his shoulder gently in reassurance.

He looked up to find Prowl, optics faint with exhaustion, watching.

"He seemed to rest easier when I lowered the lights."

"He won't rest easily until we have Sunny safe and sound."

Prowl didn't argue with that, and Ratchet wouldn't have been impressed if the tactician had tried. Some things were beyond dispute. Sideswipe was running out of time, and that was indisputable too. They could only hope Prowl's lead produced results and soon.

Sighing, the medic tucked a black-trimmed arm back against Sideswipe's torso and turned from the berth. He hadn't really expected to find Prowl in recharge. Their second in command had a more than healthy complement of special ops programming – both acquired in his own right and inherited across his bond from Jazz. Prowl could probably list every packet of code that had crossed his firewalls in either direction, and quantify the mass of dust that had settled against his frame, since making Earthfall. He was certainly conscious of every transmission and mechanism in his immediate environs. Any mech with that much self-awareness was going to find the intrusion of an energon line, and the work his systems put in to assimilating the fluid, more than enough to keep him from rest.

If Ratchet was prepared to step in, with sedatives and programming blocks, Prowl would power down regardless, but even after an hour on the external supply, the tactician's reserves were shockingly low. His systems weren't even close to stable. Better to intervene as little as possible – at least until they had no choice.

And, of course, if Prowl was awake then he was not idle. Ratchet flicked out his sensors without warning, unsurprised to catch the ripple of comms traffic. Prowl wouldn't be the mech they knew and loved if he wasn't using the down time to catch up both on reports and the background context he needed to understand them. Given a new world to assimilate, the tactician would still be busy days hence with the influx of new information. Frowning, his medic considered doing something to block that – even if it meant turning off the medbay wireless hub. There wasn't a lot of point though. Give it another hour or two and the energon transfusion – at least this first transfusion of the series the medic had planned – would be over. If Prowl didn't recharge then, Ratchet would certainly have something to say about it. For the moment though blocking Prowl's access would simply leave the medic with a restless, exhausted and frustrated tactician on his hands. The mech's spark didn't need that kind of strain… and nor did Ratchet's.

Ratchet looked up at his friend and tried to see past the broken bond, past the worry for lost warriors and the looming shadow of the Matrix. Maybe it was Prowl's exhaustion reflecting back on him, or just the long, long hours of the last few days catching up with Ratchet himself, but he honestly couldn't think of anything to say. Where could he possibly start?

Prowl's small half-smile was spark-breakingly reminiscent of earlier days. It told Ratchet that his chagrin was seen and understood and, in some measure, shared.

"There will be time to talk later," the tactician murmured, his optics steady. "You're tired, Ratchet. I will watch over Sideswipe. You should rest."

"Says the pot to the kettle."

A look of sheer bewilderment greeted the human aphorism. That got a snort from the medic, and a reluctant smile teased from his faceplates. Ratchet took a few steps toward his friend's berth, reaching out to squeeze the tactician's shoulder. He shook his head as he turned away and headed towards his own office. There would be no recharge for him, not yet, but he couldn't deny that it would feel good to take the weight off his pedes.

"You've got a couple of hours, and then I want you powered down and recharging, understand?"

Prowl inclined his head, his optics already a little distant as he focussed on one of the many NEST reports neglected over the last few days. Smiling despite himself at the familiarity of the moment, Ratchet left his patients in peace.


	10. Part Nine

"Prowl not here?" Ironhide asked the question even before he stopped. Judging by the expressions on the faces of his human colleagues, it was one they hadn't quite dared give voice.

The topkick truck braked to a halt in front of the gantry, transformed, and spared Lennox, Epps and Graham a nod as his head rose level with the elevated command post. His gaze slid onwards, noting the carefully neutral expression on Optimus Prime's face before coming to rest on Ratchet.

Their medic was out of medbay, which probably counted as a good thing, but he looked unimpressed, his scowl not quite hiding the concern Ironhide read in his glowing optics.

"He's only been in recharge for a few hours. I caught him working late into the night. By the time I realised he wasn't even trying to cycle down, the slagger was pretty much ready to drop offline anyway. If he does that again, I'm going to make him wish he was never sparked. And if anyone wakes him before he comes out of recharge naturally, they'll join him." Ratchet folded his arms across his chest, frowning at Optimus and Ironhide in turn before throwing a forbidding glance towards the humans for good measure.

Ironhide returned the frown, cycling his arm cannons in a worried gesture. Most mechs recharged infrequently by human standards, and could be woken from their recharge cycle or skip it entirely without any ill effects whatsoever. Ratchet's insistence that Prowl slept in the medbay, and the way he was hovering over their second, was more than a little unsettling. Slag it, it hadn't taken a medic's optics to see that Prowl was in a bad way, but Ironhide was starting to suspect he'd underestimated just how bad. Every mech knew losing a bondmate was hard, physically as well as mentally. Even so, Ratchet's deep worry for their friend sent shivers through his back struts.

He nodded, stowing his cannons only when Optimus glanced down at them. Shifting on his peds, Ironhide folded his arms to stop himself fidgeting. "We could delay the meeting 'till he's up and about?"

"We've kind of muddled along without Prowl here before, Ironhide." Epps leaned forward against the gantry rail, head tilted back so he could keep Optimus, as well as Ratchet and Ironhide, in sight. "What's different about today?"

Ironhide and Optimus Prime exchanged long looks. The sergeant had meant his 'muddled along' as a sarcastic understatement. He didn't realise just how much truth there was in the phrase. With Jazz gone and Bumblebee on long term deployment, their officer corps was seriously depleted. It was an ongoing struggle for Ironhide and Prime to marshal their disparate, unbalanced and unfamiliar forces. The Autobot diaspora had left small groups scattered across half the galaxy. While every new arrival was a joy, the scattering of 'bots who'd made it to Earth hardly made up a coherent team, or covered even half the specialities Ironhide could once have counted on. Sometimes it seemed he only found out what they could do in the heat of battle, and only then if the right mech happened to be in the right place at the right time.

With that in mind, not including their greatest tactician, their finest administrator, and – Pit! – their second in command in an officer-level meeting was foolhardy at best. More than that, Ironhide was looking forward to having Prowl's steady optics and calm voice back. He'd missed his old friend more than he'd ever admit.

Optimus spoke before Ironhide could frame a satisfactory answer to Epps' question. He sighed, the air cycling through his vents in a sudden gust.

"Unfortunately delaying the meeting isn't really an option – primarily _because_ of Prowl's work last night."

"The pictures?" Epps leaned back a little to better see the Prime's face. "Have the techs found a match?"

"Not as of yet." Prime's deep voice vibrated through the large hangar. His optics dimmed a little. "We are still waiting on that analysis. However, in addition to downloading his own intelligence records to our mainframe, substantially boosting our pooled information on the activities of both Autobots and Decepticons elsewhere in the galaxy, and reviewing our information on Sunstreaker's disappearance, Prowl took the time to produce a preliminary tactical analysis on several of the reports and pending investigations that we have neglected recently. My second in command flagged one of those reports for my immediate attention."

"He was just about to go find you and wake you about it when I caught him." Ratchet grimaced, pinging an officer-only channel for privacy as he went on via the comms. "_Mech was barely able to make his optics focus, let alone give a coherent briefing. I told him it could wait for the morning."_

Lennox was frowning, joining Epps at the railing. "Which report, Prime? Something that might lead us to Sunny?"

Optimus shook his head, resisting the urge to sigh again, although Ironhide could tell it took an effort. "Regrettably not. Prowl's review of the reports coming in from Europe, however, raises a significant concern."

"The Poland thing? I thought we thought that was just a scout stirring things up? Making trouble for the sake of it and maybe trying to distract us."

Ironhide nodded, his assessment largely in agreement with Lennox' summary. Ratchet just waited, his narrowed optics resting on Prime and his expression expectant.

Turning back to his two standing officers, Prime sent each of them a data packet, holding their gazes until both had time to review the information. Ironhide swore, his cannons charging instinctively. As always, the logic in Prowl's report was impeccable, his trained processor dissecting the situation to reveal its core elements and sifting through those for clues. And as usual, the results were disconcerting.

"How the frag did we miss that?"

Ratchet rubbed his helm, weariness dripping from him.

"We've had other things on our minds."

"Ah… guys?" Epps called up, glancing sideways at his stone-faced commanding officer. Ironhide grimaced his apology. Lennox did not like to be left out of the loop – for good reason. There were far too many things in this civil war that could get a human killed. Ignorance was one of the worst and Lennox knew it.

Prime glanced at the screens that lined one side of the gantry, several of them coming to life with data, even as Optimus summarised the key points aloud.

"The human eye-witness accounts all mention a large, grey machine. However, Prowl's analysis suggests that the witnesses have reported conflicting features consistent with not one but three different Decepticons known to be in this system."

"Combine that with data on unrecorded flights from air traffic control in the region…" Ratchet picked up, still scanning the data himself. "And a number of disturbances and thefts of raw materials…"

"It's a base." Ironhide slammed a fist into the open palm of his other hand. "A Decepticon base being built right under our noses."

"Damn," Lennox swore quietly, his eyes scanning the information on the screens, although his human brain could only be processing a small fraction of it. "I'd swear half that data wasn't there yesterday."

It hadn't been. It took a mech with good instincts and determination to sidestep his way through the maze of human information networks and track down something like this. Red Alert could have done it. And Jazz maybe. Not many others. It certainly took more patience and concentration than anyone had to spare since Sideswipe fell.

Ironhide shrugged, his optics flickering as he realised why Prowl's report, and this meeting, had been tagged as urgent. Instinctively he checked his chronometer, before looking at his Prime. Optimus nodded in response to his unasked question, speaking aloud for the benefit of their human allies.

"This analysis strongly suggests that at least a subset of the Decepticon faction is in the final stages of constructing an advance base. Unfortunately, my negligence in overlooking these reports has left us with a very limited window in which to act before that base is likely to be fully fortified and our opponents become firmly entrenched."

"How limited are we talking?" Lennox asked with a frown, breaking off his study of the information displays to look up at the Autobots.

"My tactician estimates a twelve hour window from the present time before the risk factor associated with routing the Decepticon incursion rises substantially."

This time the profanity spilling from Lennox's lips was rather stronger. Even NEST's fast transports, benefiting as they did from Cybertronian technology, were looking at seven long hours in the air to reach Eastern Europe. If they were going to respond to this they'd need to lift off within the hour and strategise in flight. And Ironhide didn't need Prowl's coded tag on the file to tell him that failing to respond was not an option.

Lennox didn't have the advantage of tens of millennia spent fighting the Decepticons, or of working with Prowl, to fall back on.

"Optimus, I get the reason for concern, but your guy's just now arrived on Earth. Are you sure he's got to grips with this as well as he thinks he has? He wouldn't be the first to blunder into a new situation and assume the worst."

Ironhide bridled, his cannons whirring. Ratchet shook his head. Optimus just met Lennox's eyes with his steady blue optics.

"Prowl's analysis is impeccable, Major Lennox. And I would expect no less."

To his credit, the human didn't flinch in the face of Prime's implied rebuke. Lennox had the deployment and safety of his own team to think of. Ironhide could respect that.

"You trust his judgement," Lennox noted.

"With my spark," Optimus said. Ironhide might not be able to voice the sentiment with Prime's calm resolve, but he couldn't deny he felt the same. He gave a short nod when the human glanced in his direction for confirmation.

Lennox sighed. "Then I guess we're going to Poland." He turned to Epps. "Scramble the active battle squads. Wheels up in fifty."

Ironhide nodded to the human captain and then to his Prime. He headed out to get their own troops moving. And left Ratchet and Prime to the argument already reflected on both faces.

* * *

Waking was a struggle. A thin keen echoed in Prowl's audio sensors and he recognised it as his own.

He silenced his vocaliser with an automatic command, rendering his cry silent. Pain wracked him. It flooded his tired limbs, his aching processor and the spark that would never be whole again. Every part of him clung to the fragmenting recharge cycle, not wanting to face another day, year, vorn of agony. He knew better than to believe it would fade any time soon, or that he would ever wake without grieving anew for his lost bondmate.

His processor strained, resisting its reboot cycle. He could feel a crash building. It was tempting, oh so tempting, to let it come.

But then… something stirred inside him. The sparklet that hovered beside his own centre wasn't conscious. It was barely more than a flicker of emotion, a vague sense that he was not alone. It didn't replace Jazz. It couldn't come close. But it was enough to shake him from his shocked descent into stasis.

His processors rebooted sluggishly, his optics flickering into dim life. Error messages and status warnings streamed past them, and he dismissed each one, satisfied for now simply to be online.

As he had every cycle since Jazz left him, Prowl awoke with his hand resting above his spark and the bitter knowledge that another life was utterly dependent on his. If he returned to the Matrix, he'd be taking Jazz's last gift with him. And while that was still far from unlikely, he would not allow it to happen through his negligence alone.

"Prowl?"

The tall Autobot blinked, cycling his optics without shifting their focus from the polystyrene ceiling tiles above him. It took longer than it should have for him to realise that he lay supine on a medbay berth, or to process the gravity, atmosphere and magnetic field signature that told him he was on Earth. He'd become far too accustomed to waking alone and in the quiet of deep space. He needed time to deal with the surging grief that enveloped his spark, and to give the brutal logic of his battle-trained processor time to reassert itself. Jazz was gone, but that couldn't be the end. His sparklet needed him. More than that, the Autobots needed him – not just to pursue some abstract cause, but to keep all that was left of his people, his friends, alive.

The keening cry that had echoed through him began to subside. The fragile remnants of his control returned. He reactivated his vocaliser, clearing it with a whir as a worried face looked down into his.

"Prowl? Are you okay? Please, I really, really don't want to have to call Ratchet right now. He was pretty much venting fire when Optimus made him leave."

Blue optics refocused on a matching pair, dilated with concern. A vibrant yellow blur resolved into the familiar plating of Bumblebee, and Prowl felt the young scout's servos grip his arm.

Prowl nodded, pushing himself up from the berth and unable to stop the flare of frustration when Bumblebee was forced to steady him. His door-wings flicked out, balancing his seated weight and he realised that while the spark-deep pain still throbbed through him, the familiar ache of grinding door-hinges was gone. Aware that his silence was just fuelling Bumblebee's anxiety, but unable to resist his curiosity, he paged back through the warnings he'd received on reboot. Venting a sigh, he made a mental note to thank Ratchet. His systems were still a mess, the weakness of his spark undermining the medic's efforts. Even so, he hadn't woken with so few errors from his frame since this ordeal began. The aches and pains Ratchet had relieved might be largely cosmetic, but it still felt good to move his door-wings freely, and he'd forgotten what it felt like to have his energon system read merely as 'low' rather than 'critical'.

"Prowl? If you don't talk to me soon, I'm calling the Hatchet and then we'll both be sorry."

Prowl's optics dimmed for a moment in surprise. He tilted his head to one side, studying his young friend. "Then perhaps it's a good thing that will be unnecessary, Bumblebee."

Bumblebee took a step back, venting a gusty sigh. Prowl's splayed door-wings twitched, adjusting to the loss of support as Bumblebee withdrew his hand.

"Are you sure, Prowl? You looked kind of out of it." The younger mech shifted awkwardly, not meeting Prowl's eye… not admitting he'd heard the officer's keening cry.

Prowl let his gaze rest steadily on the youngster. "I assure you that I am operating within acceptable parameters."

It wasn't quite the same thing as 'well' or 'fine' and both Autobots knew it. Bumblebee glanced up, catching Prowl's optics for a moment before looking away and giving a jerky nod. He reached behind him and then turned back, presenting Prowl with a weak smile and a palely-luminescent energon cube.

"Doctor's orders."

Prowl didn't bother to argue. He accepted the cube, taking a sip from it before subspacing it with a brief glare that dared Bumblebee to comment. He didn't expect his non-compliance to escape Ratchet for long, but he saw no reason to choke down the sting even of low-grade when the medic wasn't present.

"And where is…?" Prowl peered past Bumblebee's yellow-armoured frame, catching a glimpse of Sideswipe's red lying on his berth beyond. Of the Ratchet's new and – in Prowl's strictly private opinion – rather unflattering fluorescent green, there was no sign. Frowning slightly, Prowl brought his optics back to the mech hovering by his berth. His voice trailed off, his slowly-booting processor finally catching up with his situation.

"Ah…" The scout's hesitation was uncharacteristic. "I'm not sure if I'm meant to tell you."

Distracted for the moment, Prowl waved a dismissive hand. A backlog of comm messages scrolled past his HUD. A request for clarification on his urgent report of last night from Optimus Prime was quickly followed by 'query withdrawn' addenda from both Prime and Ratchet. There was a long pause before an official 'approved for ultra-light duties' statement from Ratchet, accompanied by a Cybertronian notation adding 'only because I can't slagging well stop you thinking' in the medic's inimitable style. The assignment notice from Prime that followed suggested Ratchet had got to him too. It flatly banned anything physically strenuous, permitting limited hours of data analysis work only, with a strong steer towards 'identifying the current whereabouts and status of Autobot Sunstreaker'.

Prowl vented a sigh. He'd been intending to do just that. What frustrated and slightly alarmed him though was what Prime _hadn't_ mentioned.

"Where is Optimus?"

"Ah, Ratchet said I should get you anything you need so you don't have to…"

Bumblebee bounced on his pedes, optics dimming a little as he searched for a way to avoid the question for a second time. Prowl straightened, his door-wings twitching up again, not quite to their usual flare, but certainly rigid enough to let the young warrior see his irritation.

"Bumblebee." His voice was even, but he put a sharp edge into it that he'd not had to use in quite some time. The younger mech stuttered into silence, his own winglets fluttering nervously. "You may be aware that both Ratchet and Prime have approved me for duty. With that in mind, and speaking as your commanding officer, I suggest you consider your answer carefully as I ask again: Where is our Prime, and what is being done about the Decepticon situation in Europe?"

Small winglets drooped against Bumblebee's back, their movement entirely involuntary. The mech gave a shrug, conceding defeat, and stepped backwards into something approaching a formal pose.

"Prime took some of our people and some of the humans to deal with it."

"'Some of our people'?" Prowl repeated, raising a brow ridge and frowning at the vagueness.

The formality faded from Bumblebee's frame. He rubbed the back of his head, a human gesture Prowl might have found amusing at any other time. "Just about everyone," he admitted, spreading his hands wide. "He even persuaded Ratchet… eventually. Arcee's still on the perimeter, and Prime left me here to keep an eye on… Sides."

"And me," Prowl concluded.

Bumblebee's vocaliser emitted a warble that seemed to mingle apology with confirmation. The younger mech had become accustomed to non-vocal communication in the vorns since Tyger Pax. Even with his speech restored, it seemed he fell back into familiar patterns.

"Calm yourself. I am well aware that my current physical condition precludes me from defending either myself or Sideswipe from any hypothetical Decepticon assault. It would be impractical and illogical to resent our assigned protector."

Judging by the startled flare of Bumblebee's optics and his ruffled plating, that wasn't the response he'd been expecting. Prowl wondered if, in better times, he'd have shown frustration or anger or wounded pride. Right now he found himself unable to summon up any emotion beyond weary resignation.

Turning back to the matter in hand, Prowl forced his meandering processor to focus. He checked his chronometer and blinked back both surprise and concern. "How long ago did they leave?"

Bumblebee transmitted the time reference, following up with words before Prowl had a chance to translate the human units.

"They'd just landed and were rolling out when I heard you… wake up."

Prowl ignored Bumblebee's hesitation. He frowned, and for once didn't care that his uncertainty and concern showed. Prime was cutting the deadline he'd given him close. Closer than the margin for error stated in Prowl's report truly permitted.

If the Decepticon garrison strength was even a little larger than Prowl had estimated, or its mechs just a few percent more efficient…

He reached out to the base com-system and tried to tap the tactical information feed before growling in frustration. Last night he'd been too tired to notice the near-complete com blackout descend as Ratchet dialled down the room's wireless transmitters. It seemed the medic had been serious about him not working. With the door to medbay open, a trickle of information spilled through on a weak wireless signal, enough to update his basic coms. Not nearly enough for the high data density of a battle situation.

"I need a computer terminal and unimpeded access to the base network."

His confident statement might have carried more weight if he'd managed to stand upright without swaying. Shrugging Bumblebee's finger-servos from his shoulder, he let his optics dim and ran through a test cycle, recalibrating gyros that should have been checked in his boot-up sequence and clearly hadn't been.

"Prowl, are you sure you should…?"

Bumblebee was still hovering by his side when the cycle ended a few klicks later. The smaller bot had never been one to hide his anxiety. Prowl looked down into anxious optics and tried to ignore his young friend's twitching winglets.

"Bumblebee. I would remind you that I successfully navigated a substantial fraction of this stellar quadrant without assistance. I am quite certain that I can reach NEST's command station without – "

"I'm not supposed to leave Sides alone!" Bumblebee burst out, voice anxious enough to cut through his commander's dry comment. "Please, Prowl…"

Prowl stifled a sigh as he stalked away from the alcove-recessed berth Ratchet had chosen for him and came to a halt looking down on Sideswipe's medbay berth. The front-liner lay still, his limbs and torso limp, but his optics were lit with a dim, unfocussed glow. If Sideswipe was at all conscious of his surroundings, he gave no sign of it as Prowl crouched down to be in his line of sight.

"_Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sunstreaker."_

Just as it had the night before, the command imperative triggered a purely unconscious data-burst in response. Prowl couldn't help a shiver of relief that Sideswipe's systems were still functioning that far, even as he established that these coordinates too pointed to a location beneath the ocean floor. Unlikely to say the least, but Prowl logged them nonetheless, a part of him pondering the significance of the offset between Sideswipe's new report and those that had come before. Either the twin's absolute positioning system was drifting by a double handful of human miles each day, or…

The thought slipped beyond Prowl's grasp, lost amidst the echoes of Sideswipe's pained groan. The front-liner's finger-servos twitched, reaching out to no-one present before clenching into a fist. The glow faded from Sideswipe's optics, his fist falling open. Prowl and Bumblebee moved in unison, both turning anxiously to the med-berth readouts before relaxing with relieved sighs.

Sideswipe's condition was still critical, but it was at least stable. As Prowl understood it, Ratchet's treatment had bought them time. They could only pray that it was time enough for Prowl himself to find a true solution.

"I can't leave him, Prowl," Bumblebee repeated softly.

And if, as Prowl suspected, Bumblebee had orders to let neither Sideswipe _nor_ Prowl out of his sight…? The tactician was fairly sure his junior officer had been briefed by Ratchet on exactly what 'ultra-light duties' entailed, and empowered to enforce the definition.

Door-wings flaring, Prowl scowled, giving up on an undignified and likely futile escape attempt from the medbay. He settled to sit on the berth beside Sideswipe's, reaching into subspace for his barely-touched cube and sipping from it reluctantly.

As much as he hated to be out of touch, he trusted Prime and his fellow officers to deal with the European situation. Even so, he was concerned by how quickly Sideswipe had distracted him from the upcoming confrontation. His processor was flitting from subject to subject, long algorithms truncated by semi-regular low-energy warnings and by his automatic attempts to prioritise new sensory information. Forcing his specialised and parallel-mounted battle computer back online would override any such concerns, but he didn't need Ratchet's warning to be certain that was a very bad idea.

The best he could do was choke down the rest of this cube and try to use the energy boost to maintain his concentration.

And right now, that meant concentrating on Bumblebee's suddenly tense posture and distracted expression.

Reaching out with his limited connectivity, Prowl felt his way across the network to the wireless hub and reopened it. Only then did he power up his radio frequency receivers, scrolling through the wavebands and tuning in to the main combat frequency in time to hear Lennox barking out an order for Jolt and his supporting humans to deploy eastwards. A hurried acknowledgement was virtually lost in the thunderous roar of combat joined. It meant nothing out of context, and Prowl's engine growled in frustration as he tried and failed to pull a decent volume of tactical information over the base's human-built wi-fi network.

"Prowl?" Bumblebee jolted out of his distraction as Prowl stood abruptly. The yellow scout chased him into Ratchet's office, albeit not without a hesitation on the threshold. Prowl felt no such compunction intruding on the medic's inner sanctum. He strongly suspected his fellow officer would find more to rebuke him for than merely making use of the nearest computer terminal.

The NEST tactical system was a strange hybrid, attempting to merge both human and Cybertronian standards and managing to be marginally comprehensible to each. Prowl's optics brightened as he hacked into the control centre's main screens and scanned the information he was able to access from Ratchet's terminal. Battle status updates were overlaid on a combined map and static satellite image of a small Polish town, the layout apparently intended to cater for human visual-based analysis rather than Cybertronian coordinate processing algorithms. Pulling up additional information on any given battle unit or individual required an inordinate amount of typing, and Prowl snaked a wrist-cable into the data-port Ratchet had installed, bypassing the slower keyboard input entirely. He shifted constantly from report to report as he tried to get an over-view of the skirmish, pulling up windows, shuffling and minimising them quicker than a human would have been able to follow, let alone read and comprehend.

He was caught up enough that he barely noticed when a second monitor screen appeared beside the first, Bumblebee carrying it over from an unused med-berth. He merely nodded an acknowledgement and expanded the human projections and Cybertronian data-files onto the new pixel space. He didn't even acknowledge the third and fourth screens, and didn't ask where the scout had found them, dragging the main map up to the top-left screen, the personnel files – both human and Cybertronian – to the top right, keeping the feed of human targeting data and analysis in the bottom left and freeing up the bottom right for his own notes.

Both wrist-cables were engaged now, information flowing through Prowl and to the screens as quickly as his over-strained processor could manage. Bumblebee was at his side, an unnoticed hand supporting his back between the door-wings as Prowl focussed entirely on the comms coming in from the battle-field, and the supporting information that allowed him to process them. Gradually though, the picture became clearer to them both.

Prime's team weren't exactly outnumbered. In terms of sheer physical strength, three large Decepticons, a single Seeker and a handful of drones racked up fairly evenly against the combined forces of NEST's humans, Optimus Prime, Ironhide, Ratchet, Jolt and the young twins, Mudflap and Skids. Where the Decepticons held the upper hand was in their air support and in their total disregard for both human life and human property. It was enough to make the difference.

The NEST forces were scattered, their coordination limited to occasional shouted attempts at partial reports from the various fighters and group leaders as opportunity allowed. The control room at Diego Garcia was trying to maintain an overview, but its staff hampered by incomplete information being fed to them and a fundamental difficulty with interpreting the conflicting Cybertronian signals and infrared flares.

There were plenty of those. The night-darkened streets of the Polish town were littered with hazards, everything from rough cobbles to entire stepped streets, from empty market stalls to domestic dumpsters left out for collection the following day. The Autobots worked around them, trying to cause the minimum amount of disturbance and leave little evidence of their presence. The Decepticons didn't, ploughing through with as much noise and chaos as it was within their power to make, targeting humans – both NEST forces, and the few foolhardy civilians venturing out to investigate – whenever the opportunity presented itself.

It was a constant, running battle. No, it was a series of them, each one a struggle to take a Decepticon down with as little collateral damage as possible. And, Prowl's years of battle experience told him with increasing certainty, it was a battle that the isolated, uncoordinated and hobbled Autobots were going to lose.

"Frag it!"

Bumblebee's expression spoke eloquently for his shock at his superior's outburst. The scout stood frozen as Prowl leaned down and reached blindly for Ratchet's lower-most, right-hand drawer. The tactician's hand closed on the expected cube and he glanced down for just long enough to confirm the vivid sheen of high-grade before knocking it back in a single, burning draft.

His fans kicked on at once. His entire fuel processing system seemed to spasm, the need to purge almost overwhelming, and agony spread through his frame carrying on a wave of the highly caustic fluid. His optics flared, and in that dizzy, everlasting moment before the overcharge wreaked its havoc on his depleted systems, Prowl kicked his battle computer online.

His energy levels plummeted as abruptly as they'd risen. His frame was still shrieking in agony, but both pain and error warnings were easy to set aside as his processor flooded with new analyses, tactical projections and the hard statistics to back up his instincts.

Tension remained but the fear was gone as he reassessed the display and the information it contained. He let himself sink into the familiar clarity of pure numbers and probabilities, aware of the myriad of simulations running in the tactical computer's independent cores and building up in its vast databanks, but only caring about the top level analyses. He noted a confirmed identity for one of the 'Cons drop out of the tactical archives that even he couldn't access without his battle firewalls active. A flicker of his optics and the information was transferred to NEST's system and set aside for the more immediate tactical situation. Watching carefully, he waited for a brief lull, catching the few moments when his Prime was disengaged and not under immediate assault.

"Prime?" Prowl's voice was utterly calm as he pinged in to the Autobot officers' encrypted channel. He reviewed his findings with confidence and satisfaction, updating them second by second. The battle computer could provide the numbers he needed, the statistics, projections and alternatives. It could suppress his emotional reaction and all its associated logical flaws. The decision making though, that was all Prowl. The even tone of his voice was as familiar over a battle com-net as Prime's encouragement and Ironhide's enraged roar. "A few suggestions?"

"Make them orders!" Prime's harried tone made his own assessment of the situation clear. Optimus flipped to the general NEST frequency without hesitation. "Prowl has tac-com."

"Jolt: disengage. Withdraw three blocks east, one north. Cover gamma division. Lieutenant Walters, gamma division: relocate one block to your left as soon as possible. Lay defensive cordon across St Wurthem's Plaza. Ironhide: hold your current position. Mudflap, Skids: Ironhide is zero point eight one kilometres northwest of you in the old town. Converge on his location. Prime…"

The orders streamed from Prowl in a smooth stream, his tone never varying. There was no hint of satisfaction in his voice as Ironhide's cannon dealt with a hulking rotary mech who'd been harassing the young twins, while Mudflap and Skids in turn dealt with the five fast-moving drones who'd been out-manoeuvring the large armoury officer. He didn't let his emotions register when he got Prime and Jolt in place to cover a human unit who'd been under heavy assault, or managed to manoeuvre Ratchet through the chaos to assist their medics with a withdrawal. His instructions didn't falter when Lennox's alpha squad managed to put themselves directly in the path of the Seeker's strafing run, merely bringing Prime forward to cover and shield them, while advising them on ordinance and targeting to ground the flier.

It was almost half an hour before the first critical system warnings started to compete with his battle computer's output in terms of priority. His only concessions to his own weakness were to package a quick précis of his overall strategy for transmission to Prime, and to lean his frame a little more heavily against Ratchet's desk as he checked on his preparations. There was only one more thing he needed before he closed this trap – a fast, agile mech he could rely on to hold their nerve.

His first thought – Jazz – sent a spasm through his spark that not even the battle computer could entirely suppress. His second – the twins – carried its own concerns and was equally impossible. Frowning, he glanced back over his shoulder at his third-choice mech and tried to focus on identifying a fourth, rather than railing about Primus's dark humour.

"Bumblebee, tell me about Jolt."

A new warning from his frame pinged his HUD as the young scout spoke. Prowl filed it with the others and put it out of his processor. He had too much work to do to worry about such things now.

* * *

The air vibrated. The mingled notes of a dozen heavy engines and a pair of jet turbines blended to form a solid wall of sound. William Lennox felt it to the core of his bones. His jaw-bone ached from the pressure of his clenched teeth and he could feel the pounding headache waiting in the back of his skull to ambush him when he had a moment to spare.

A series of blinding flashes split the darkness from somewhere to his left. Debris filled the air, flying shards of brick and stonework clattering against his body-armour. Crouching, waving his men to pause and seek cover, Lennox blinked away the after-images as fiercely as he could. The town's power grid had been an early casualty of this battle, and Lennox's squad had become accustomed to fighting in the scant moonlight. Brighter lights meant mechs engaged in battle, and those short-lived beacons erupted far too often around them.

It was only because of Prowl's steady litany of instructions and commentary that he knew the mech on the street to his left was Ironhide, and that he was facing down a tank-former named Destrier. Just as he knew that Prime was on the other side of the plaza they were approaching, and that Ratchet and the newly re-grouped beta squad were converging on the same point from somewhere to his right.

His vision finally clear, Lennox rose from his crouch. His hands automatically checked his weapon for damage even as his eyes checked each of his men.

"Evans, Fusilli," he waved the two men forward to take point, hand-gestures instructing the rest of his squad to follow them. The NEST alpha squad moved forward in a wary, ducking and turning run.

Approaching the end of the street, Evans and Fusilli pressed themselves against opposite walls, each covering the main plaza while the rest of the squad hurried to throw up a temporary barricade for cover without restricting firing solutions across the open square.

Dropping behind the barricade, Lennox rested the barrel of his hand-gun against the shell of a large metal-shelled dumpster, ignoring the sour smell of rotten food that spilled from the upturned container and the question of where his men had found it. He'd smelled far worse on battlefields the world over, and unless he'd misunderstood Prowl's plan, the plaza-fronting restaurant it belonged to was about to have worse problems than a busted back-yard gate. Glancing from side to side, Lennox checked his men, sheltered behind a motley assortment of compact Polish vehicles, woodwork and anything else they could lay their hands on.

Unable to resist a scowl, Lennox tapped his ear-piece and spoke aloud to the mech who'd been manipulating this entire battlefield like his personal toy-set for something close on the last hour.

"Alpha squad in position."

"_Understood." _Prowl's far too calm voice murmured in his ear, and not for the first time Lennox had the urge to snap out a counter-order, to break free of the tactical command Prime had entrusted to the unfamiliar mech and do his best unaided. No one directing a battle – even from half a world away – should sound so detached, so emotionless. It was… inhuman.

"_All units,"_ Prowl spoke again, this time on the general battle frequency. _"Prepare for incoming targets. Ironhide: I need you to push Destrier forward in ten nano-clicks from… now. Jolt: you have your orders. Go."_

There was no time for any more doubts. Lennox sighted through his weapon's viewfinder, scanning for targets and jerking his finger away from the trigger as the familiar form of Jolt's alt-mode shot into the centre of the plaza along its single reasonably straight approach road. The deep throb of Decepticon engines followed him, the aggressors just barely visible in the dim moonlight, barrelling along the road behind him. A bright rain of plasma bolts and laser fire flickered around the young warrior, coming close to scorching his vibrant blue plating.

It fell instead on the grey-clad shell of a huge Decepticon – Destrier staggering backwards into the centre of the plaza under the force of a bombardment from Ironhide's cannons. For a moment it seemed that pursued Autobot and unsighted Decepticon would inevitably collide. Jolt swerved hard… hard enough to rock him up on two wheels until he threatened to tip into a catastrophic high-speed roll. At the last possible moment, Jolt's electro-whips snapped out, tangling around the Decepticon's legs, and it was Destrier who toppled instead, at the same time providing the stabilising force Jolt needed to complete his ninety degree turn and shoot into a side-street past a startled Mudflap and Skids.

The Decepticon tank-former sprawled across the plaza, damaged and dazed by the combination of Ironhide's barrage, the shock from Jolt's whips and his subsequent tumble. He was certainly too dazed to move out of the way as two other ground-based Decepticons, a double handful of drones and one damaged jet sped into the plaza hot on Jolt's skid plate.

The crash echoed not just off the buildings of the old town, but off the mountains and hills all around. It vibrated through Lennox's head and chest, stunning every sense. He almost missed the quiet order that blended with echoes.

"_All units: fire."_

Destrier was struggling to his feet, pushing other Decepticons off him in a metallic avalanche. The combined blast of Ironhide's cannon, Prime's, Jolt's and a dozen sabot rounds sent him back down, and this time there was no getting back up. From somewhere to his left, Lennox could hear the whoops of the young twins, mingled with a vague rebuke from Jolt and the cacophony of all three's weapons. Beyond them, the inimitable whine of Ratchet's saw provided a counterpoint to the medic's battle cry. Lennox put them out of his mind and picked out another target, even as the two men he'd left in charge of his squad's rocket launcher did the same.

It was over almost too fast. Caught in the killing zone, the Decepticon forces had no chance. It seemed like only moments before the single jet amongst them took to the air, grasping the only other online mech in his hands as damaged thrusters struggled to lift them both. Weapons fire rose to follow them, streaking past the fleeing mechs.

"Let them go."

Prime's voice broke the spell. Silence fell, broken only by rolling echoes and the clink of cooling metal. Lennox squirmed past his barricade, weapon still held ready, but with nothing to fire at but two grey metal carcases and the broken shells of a dozen small drones. All around him, from side streets staggered around the plaza, Autobots and small groups of his own men were also breaking cover. All of them wary. All of them feeling the same vague disbelief.

Beneath his heaving lungs, aching limbs and thundering headache, Lennox could still feel the sick feeling that had settled in his chest when he realised it would take a miracle to get even half of them out of this one alive. Staring at the downed Decepticons, ears ringing with the echoes of gunfire, Lennox ran his eyes over each of his friends and soldiers, struggling to grasp the fact that they'd been given one.

It was Ironhide who summed up the emotion, raising his cannon and firing a single, exuberant plasma blast to rain sparks through the air above them.

"_Primus_, I've missed having a tactician around!"

Prime patted Ironhide's shoulder, his optics carrying a mild rebuke for the display, but not arguing with the sentiment behind it. His battle-mask folded back to reveal a satisfied expression. He took a long moment to survey his troops – Autobot and human alike – before speaking into the comms.

"My thanks, Prowl. Your intervention was timely and welcome." There were a few seconds of silence and Prime's small smile faded into a frown. "Prowl?"

"Ratchet!" Bumblebee's urgent call wiped the last smiles off the faces of every officer. "Prowl just collapsed…"

"Slagging tactician!" There was no surprise in Ratchet's exclamation. Only anger, resignation and an uncharacteristically audible concern. "When will you mechs learn that when I say 'ultra-light duties', I might actually have a fragging reason? Get me back there, Optimus. Now."

It was all Ratchet said before folding his arms, his optics dim as he focussed on a private com-conversation with Bumblebee. Optimus stared at him and then gave an almost imperceptible nod, gathering himself.

"Mudflap, Jolt, escort Ratchet back to the air-field. Take transport 1 and return to base." The named 'bots nodded, transforming and waiting with engines purring until Ratchet's focus flicked back to them for long enough to transform and peel out after them, lights flashing. Prime watched them go, before turning to the others. "Autobots, start retrieval operations and prepare for withdrawal."

Lennox waved his own soldiers forward to join the clear up and to intercept the civilians now spilling out onto the streets – as far as possible _before_ they saw the giant robots hauling Decepticon carcasses into a neat heap. He rubbed the back of his neck tiredly as he moved to Optimus Prime's side, reaching up to pat his friend's ankle in a gesture of helpless reassurance.

"Will your guy be okay?"

Optimus Prime's engine rumbled. He crossed his arms across his chest, ageless optics gazing into nowhere.

"I wish I knew, Lennox," he sighed. "I truly wish I knew."


	11. Part Ten

_A/N: Apologies to those who've reviewed and not had an answer from me. I'm afraid between business travel and the inevitable back log when I got back, I've been snowed under. Please be assured I read and appreciate every review, and each one brightens my world even when I'm drowning in real life._

_And now on with the story..._

* * *

**Part Ten**

Med-bay was locked, Ratchet refusing comms and apparently uninterested in the scrapes and dents of the returning battle group.

That was never a good sign.

Optimus Prime waited an hour before letting himself into the room. It was another hour before he came out again, his faceplates sanguine and showing no sign of the dressing down they could probably have heard at the perimeter gates – in its volume and intensity if not in detail.

"Optimus?"

The entire garrison seemed to be gathered in the main hangar, Autobots accompanied by more than a few of their human comrades. It was Ironhide who stepped forward. His low rumble was level but there was an unaccustomed anxiety visible in his hunched shoulders and the whirring of his arm-cannons. Prime surveyed his lieutenant and then the impromptu gathering with a certain amount of surprise and a much-needed warmth swelling in his spark. The tangible concern for one of their own – even one scarcely known by their human contingent – underlined just how much of a community NEST had become.

Raising his voice just a fraction, Optimus Prime spoke first to the old friend in front of him.

"It would appear that our Second should brace himself for rather a strenuous rebuke when he reboots."

Relief spread outwards in a wave of laughter and murmured agreement. Prime allowed the Autobots a moment to enjoy the emotion.

"Emergencies excepted, medical bay will be sealed until the morning. Sideswipe's condition continues to be serious, and locating Sunstreaker is an urgent priority. Prowl will remain off duty for at least the next week, and will be on limited duties thereafter." He paused for a spark-beat. "Ratchet tells me he will ensure that term is clearly defined."

There was another ripple of amusement, easing the renewed tension that came with the strict medical requirements. Prime let it subside.

"Autobots, I suggest those of you without other duties take some rest while you can. Soldiers of NEST, all of you, my thanks for your service today."

There was another rumble, this time of acknowledgement. The crowd started to dissipate, not without frequent glances at the closed medbay door but reassured by their Prime and his stoic calm.

Ironhide lingered, and Bumblebee – kicked out of medbay on Ratchet's return – hovered nearby. A few of the humans seemed inclined to stay too. Major Lennox leaned from side to side, sending most of his men on their way, but Sergeant Epps and the major himself looked up at Prime with worried eyes.

Prime leaned down, offering the major his hand without comment, and holding steady as the human climbed aboard. Ironhide followed his example, scooping up Epps, and the two officers moved off, Prime nodding acceptance to Bumblebee when the scout revved uncertainly before joining them.

The small group remained silent until Prime had led them out of the hangar and into the evening light. Warm sunlight beat down on Prime's armour, warming it after a jet-lagged day that, even by Cybertronian standards, had been far too long.

"Prime?" Ironhide voiced his name a second time, the question still there in it and no less concerned.

Optimus Prime gauged his words carefully, glancing at the humans still standing on their outstretched palms. He vented a sigh.

"Ratchet is concerned, but believes Prowl will be online sometime tomorrow evening. He forced his systems hard, and suffered a severe processor crash and other systems failures as a result."

"Slag it, Prime." The Cybertronian profanity fell naturally from Lennox's lips. "If doing this is so dangerous, why…?"

Bumblebee's warble cut across him. "Prowl's tactical processor isn't dangerous!"

"He's a slagging tactician." Ironhide rumbled, his cannons rumbling.

Prime sighed. "Under normal conditions Prowl's physical condition is no more endangered by his regular duties than Ironhide's is."

The human major looked up sharply at the weapons officer. Ironhide gave his Prime a hard look for singling him out, his cannons whirring as if in demonstration. Prime met Ironhide's optics without flinching and without apology.

"The tactical abilities Prowl demonstrated today arise from an unusual combination of spark-born ability, intense training and an advanced tactical processor that is as intrinsic to his physical integrity as Ironhide's cannons are to him." He tilted his helm, his optics dimming slightly. "Like Ironhide's cannons, they are also a significant drain, drawing from a mech's power systems and ultimately from his spark."

Ironhide scowled. He shook his helm, glaring at the setting sun and forcing Epps to adjust his balance as large fingers flexed under him. "Prowl's spark is fragging weak."

"He knew it was a bad idea," Bumblebee offered, voice tentative. "He was watching pretty much from when he woke up. He waited… waited until, ah…"

"Until we were up shit creek without a paddle," Epps finished for him.

"Indeed." Prime let his own optics drift away, joining Ironhide in his study of the sunset. "Prowl offered his assistance when he determined that the risk to those of us in the field outweighed the risk to himself." He hesitated. "Major Lennox, I am asking for your patience. Even in a debilitated state, Prowl is still a vital part of this army, and one of the most dangerous mechs on this planet. If it hadn't been for his tactical insight, we would now be faced with an entrenched Decepticon position in Europe. If he hadn't intervened in the battle, I believe both elements of NEST would have suffered significant losses."

"Yeah," Lennox rubbed his neck, the human clearly weary. "I got that."

"I will not risk my Second in Command's health any further." Optimus Prime allowed a small sigh to spill from his vents. "Even if Ratchet would allow it. However, nor will I side-line him or reject the very real contributions he can still make to our battle and our ultimate victory." He leaned forward, his optics dilating as he loomed over his human counterpart. "Such abandonment would not just be folly, it would destroy Prowl, and be poor repayment for his bond-mate's sacrifice."

"Optimus." Lennox raised his hands, holding Prime's gaze in a way few, on this planet or any other, could. "You're talking as if I'm going to kick him out. As if I could. As if I would!"

Prime held his pose for several long spark-beats before straightening, a sigh flushing air through his vents. He considered the human in front of him, weariness dragging at his frame.

"This world is a young one, Lennox, a fragile one. My people brought a war to your soil that was not of your making, and fight battles that are terrifying in their destruction and intensity. Your government seized upon our offer of protection. They have supported our partnership, provided resources and facilities for our use. I wonder though if they'll be so accommodating in offering resources to an Autobot who I will _not_ place in front-line of battle."

Lennox swore, pacing a few steps before scowling up at the mech towering above him.

"I don't know about your world, Prime, but in mine, an injured veteran is taken care of, and the family of a soldier killed in service has rights. In my book, Prowl's both, and I'll be fragged before I let any paper-pusher in Washington say otherwise. Hell, I don't even know what you're worried about. I play them the tape of Poland, and the Pentagon will be screaming for him to process their databases."

"Which is why we won't release the tape," Ironhide scowled. The hulking black mech folded his arms, finger servos drumming against his cannons in a gesture he'd picked up from the human in front of him. "Prowl isn't a machine, Lennox. He's not going to be exploited."

"No," Lennox made the word a promise, unflinching. "He's not."

Prime nodded, glancing back at the repair bay and thinking of his second, of Sideswipe and the medic still fighting for them both.

"Good."

* * *

There was probably a circle of that Pit the 'bots talked about reserved just for whoever had invented paperwork.

Rubbing his neck, flexing it to loosen the tired muscles, Lennox scrawled his signature at the bottom of a page. He'd read maybe three quarters of it, and that was gonna have to be enough. Even after the night to rest, his concentration was still far from good. Okay, so the pencil pushers in Washington wanted details. He could understand that. It would be tough enough to explain away a full-scale battle on American soil. Explaining it to a sovereign nation half-hearted at best about military involvement, deep in the heart of over-populated Europe must be challenging even the Pentagon's diplomacy. Well, that was why the generals got the big money. Even on Lennox's pay grade, there were far more of the endless report forms than any sane man could take.

Did his forces trash two wooden carts in the act of saving human civilisation, or three? Who the frag cared? When Decepticon plasma fire was raining down from every direction, cover was cover, and that was the end of the story. Apparently though, his was a minority opinion.

Grimacing, Lennox shuffled through the pile of accounts that littered his desk. If anything Epps' report was less coherent than Lennox's own, but there was a certain vindictive schadenfreude to be had from its mere existence. The major gave himself a few seconds to enjoy it before hunching forward once again, trying to reconcile the conflicting statements from his squad leaders.

The appearance of a Cybertronian data pad, lying atop nearly half of the strewn paper, rather took him aback.

Lennox looked up from the blurring black-on-white text to blink at Optimus Prime in bewilderment. Prime towered over the open-ceilinged and thin-walled booth that served as the NEST commander's office. It was a surprise to see him there. The Prime had been on the other side of the hangar, doing his _standing still_ thing, all morning, trying to reassure his pensive Autobots. Behind medbay's locked doors, Prowl was still unconscious, or in recharge, or at the very least in Ratchet's care. The twins were once again at death's door, the brief island of stability their medic had won for them reaching its limit.

The holding pattern that had fallen over NEST, the necessity of regathering, recouping, and yes, even catching up on the damn paperwork, did nothing to take away from the desperate urgency of their situation.

So, all in all, Lennox couldn't blame Prime for focussing on keeping his troops calm. He wasn't expecting the Autobot leader to come in search of his human counterpart and certainly not to offer more paperwork, 'bot-style, as a greeting.

Prime's optics dilated and then refocused, just a hint of a smile appearing on his weary faceplates.

"I believe you will find that document of some assistance in your current task."

For a wild moment, Lennox wondered if Prime was stepping in for his stricken front-liners as unit prankster. Then reality reasserted itself. Intrigued, he pushed himself up, first to stand behind his seldom-used desk and then to clamber onto the chair he'd vacated in doing so, in search of a better view. The data pad was perhaps eight inches thick, its surface three feet wide and as long as Lennox's outstretched arms. His angle on the surface wasn't perfect, but he could see enough to interest him. A column of Cybertronian glyphs was mirrored by notations in a more readable, roman text.

"01:46:20 Human vehicle perforated by Decepticon fire – registration XXY 261S; 01:46:48 Prime engaged by three drone elements; 01:46:55 Human vehicle XXY 261S now classified as destroyed…"

Lennox's voice trailed off, in relief as much as disbelief.

"Someone was keeping notes?"

"Necessary tactical simulation input. Rather beyond the level of detail I generally require. In usual circumstances Prowl would produce an executive summary for me when time allowed." Prime's small smile faded. "However, he was able to execute several incremental data dumps before falling offline. Having de-encrypted some part of those, it occurred to me that you might have a use for these minutiae."

"Not me!" Lennox snorted, looking up at his co-commander with a grin. "But thanks."

Well, give or take a little creative editing, that was the formal report taken care of. Figuring out how to download the information would be fun. Optimus Prime would certainly do it for him if asked, but if there was one thing he'd learned about Cybertronians, it was that everything was a test at one level or another. He'd work it out himself, and, quite honestly, welcome the distraction.

"Chinatown!"

The shout was perhaps one distraction too far. Above him, Optimus turned to look to his right. At ground level, Lennox jumped down from his chair and dodged around the partition that defined his office.

NEST had several layers of technical support, from a division embedded in the Pentagon itself, down to the front-line techs who worked in their own corner of the communal command hangar. It was from that latter section that the shout had come, and it was on that area that attention – both Autobot and human – was focussing.

Lennox jogged forward, ignoring the server boxes that lined the wall in that direction and the three banks of computer-laden benches. The man who'd shouted – one of the senior support staff he should probably know by name – had snatched his tablet out of its dock and was already moving out, towards the towering Autobot commander and the human major currently somewhere around his ankle level.

"Corporal Speelman, you have news?"

Trust Optimus to know the man's name. Lennox saved his breath for keeping up with the Autobot's long strides, letting Prime's question stand for them both.

"Sir, the photos… the ones, ah, Commander Prowl identified? We've got a match! The fringes of Chinatown, Eighth block, maybe Ninth, and somewhere around Sixteen south."

Lennox was close enough now to snatch the tablet out of Speelman's hand, inspecting it for himself, before holding it up for Prime to see. Optimus crouched, his focus shifting, the human-scale tablet as unwieldy for him as his data pad had been for Lennox.

A moment later, the device in Lennox's hand chirped and the side-by-side comparison was suddenly mirrored on the monitors of the main command gantry. It wasn't perfect by any means. The photographs Prowl uncovered had been distorted and streaked with light trails. Even after so long to work on them, the composite was still dominated by fuzzy blobs of light and colour. Lennox fixed the image in his mind, and then screwed up his eyes, squinting at the neon-lit, night darkened cityscape projected beside it.

The angle wasn't quite right, and the roads were never going to be an exact match – their procession of headlamps and taillights varying from moment to moment – but the neon lights of that diner, this club, these – ah – adult entertainment centres, cast a very distinctive pattern of colour and shape in the darkness. Not perfect, but close enough.

Glancing up at the gantry, Lennox could already see orders to the scouts rolling up the comm readout screen. The familiar music of transformation dragged his eyes to the far side of the hangar in time to see Bumblebee peeling out to re-join the search.

Slapping Speelman on the shoulder, shoving the man's tablet back towards his chest, Lennox found time to bark out a curt "Good work" before turning to jog for the gantry himself.

He waited until he was there, his eyes scanning the various resources, both human and Autobot, that NEST could put into play, before reaching for his cell phone.

Of all the dives Sunny could have found for himself – or, indeed, allowed his brother to point him towards – this was one of the roughest, and not one that NEST was equipped for. Good thing he knew someone who was.

"Detective Frye? Yeah, I know what you said. You said you couldn't do sweet eff-ay without a lead. Well, I've got one, and my guy's running out of time. So if you don't want to help, you'd better have a fragging good reason."

* * *

"I know you're awake, you know."

The slow climb out of recharge – or stasis lock maybe, Prowl's memory core seemed rather alarmingly hazy on the matter – was perhaps a little easier than it had been before. He could feel another presence in his processor, guiding him away from the painful thoughts that were always the first to greet him when he woke. Someone was processing his reboot commands for him, correcting his physical status coding as each problem arose, flagging and prioritising those that couldn't be dismissed entirely.

Ratchet could do that much for him, could deal with the fallout of a catastrophic processor crash and the complaints of a frame pushed to the limits of endurance. He could do nothing to still the familiar agony in Prowl's spark.

The medic's touch faltered when he was caught in the bombardment of imagery that engulfed Prowl along with Jazz's missing spark resonance. He had to be seeing the views of Mission City that Prowl had no business carrying in his processor, feeling the second hand terror and the heavy, inescapable realisation that there was no way out. With Ratchet stealing away his distractions, there was nothing to shake Prowl from the memory. A hated voice growled above him, speaking a language that registered as unfamiliar. He struggled, muscle cables straining, and felt his limbs gripped in an unshakeable hold. And then there was nothing but searing pain.

"Prowl!"

Ratchet's presence reeled under the onslaught, and distantly Prowl registered the roar of the medic's cooling fans. The sound helped, giving Prowl something to focus on beyond the agony that flooded his circuits. He cut off the memory with a grunt of effort, forcing his processor to flush its RAM and struggling to find something to overwrite the images. Even so, the agony Jazz once felt tore through his systems, sending ghost signals through his sensory network. This was familiar pain, pain he'd had to learn to deal with alone. He felt Ratchet trying to disengage, the medic a little disoriented himself as Prowl's processor reasserted itself and firewalls came back up to full strength. The tactician refused the disconnect commands instinctively, knowing he couldn't leave his friend like this. Ratchet had tried to help him, to ease his awakening, he didn't deserve to suffer such a memory as his only thanks.

Slowly, painfully, Prowl pulled another image sequence from the depths of his memory core. Jazz's visor glinted in the constantly moving lights, a broad grin on his faceplates as he danced through the party, pausing here and there to pat a friend's back, exchange a few words, or just swipe their cube of high grade. Laughing aloud in the face of Ratchet's indignation, the saboteur spun back through the celebration, his slender silver frame flowing from light to shadow with instinctive grace and one target in mind. Jazz looked up, meeting his bondmate's eyes, and all the joy and love expressed in his dance was there in his spark too, flooding the link between them and returned in full measure.

Prowl blinked, the memory fading as his awareness of the world around him returned. Ratchet severed the last link between them and then pulled the hard line connection clear of Prowl's wrist-port, recoiling it with one economical gesture. The medic spun, putting his back to the prone tactician. Through newly recalibrated optics, Prowl watched Ratchet's shoulders tremble. The older mech's vents hitched, powerful fans still roaring in an attempt to calm his systems.

"Ratchet… I'm sorry."

That got a response. Ratchet turned back to face him, a look of open disbelief on his face. Prowl had a glimpse of lubricant pooling in blue optics and then Ratchet ducked his head, running his finger servos down his face. When the medic looked up again the familiar scowl was back, albeit tighter around the edges than normal.

"Don't you dare! Don't you slagging _dare_ apologise for what you're going through." Ratchet vented hard. His optics slid away from Prowl's unable to hold his gaze for long. There was a long pause before Ratchet spoke again. "Thank you," he grated with obvious reluctance.

Prowl's nod of acknowledgement was more of a brief jerk. His spark ached, his systems struggling to regain their own equilibrium. He'd grown accustomed to awakening to the sensory memory of Jazz's death. Memories of better times were the only defence he had, and those were hardly enough to keep him from shutting down on the spot. The one he'd gifted to Ratchet wasn't the most intimate or joyful or precious, not by a long way, but it was as much as he was willing to share – a single memory of smiles and laughter and love, to offset the experience of a death that the medic already grieved and now understood too well.

Then the sparklet stirred inside Prowl's chest and summoned another memory file, one he wasn't ready to share with anyone – one moment of joy and grief and love and pain all twisted into a single, terrifying knot.

"Primus, Prowl…"

Ratchet still wasn't looking at him, didn't see the new wave of pain wash across his patient's faceplates, or the anxiety that followed as Prowl turned his attention inwards, checking his nascent offspring for harm. The medic's voice trailed off and Ratchet shook himself, literally, armour plates rattling. He looked up to see Prowl's hand resting on his chest-plates and instantly the tactician felt the tingle of another scan play across his sensor net. His door-wings twitched, his face returning to a carefully blank mask as fury built in Ratchet's optics.

"The sparkling is fine." Whatever anger Ratchet carried, the reassurance came first. Only then did yellow-green fists clench and rage let rip. "But it might not have been! You were slagging lucky, Prowl, and you know it. It was touch and go. If Bumblebee hadn't been with you…. What in Primus' name were you thinking? How dare you risk your spark – both your sparks! – like that?"

The tirade was strangely reassuring. Prowl felt as if he were on firmer ground, the sheer familiarity of the moment comforting, despite its trigger. He let his hand fall away from his chest, settling back onto the med berth as Ratchet ranted.

His frame felt uncomfortable, unfamiliar, and it took Prowl a few moments to page back through a new suite of maintenance reports, this time fragmented by his processor crash. The extent and complexity of the repair work took him somewhat aback.

"…Prowl? Are you even listening to me?"

"You overhauled my fuel system?"

Ratchet blinked at him, optics cycling and air spilling through his vents in a huff.

"No."

Frowning, Prowl ran his internal scans again, fidgeting as he tried to settle the new components.

"But…"

"No. I didn't overhaul your fuel system. I replaced the slagging thing!"

Prowl flinched, hearing the frustrated anger in his medic's voice.

"Intervention was necessary." He didn't mean it as self-justification but it came out that way. "There was an unacceptable probability of severe losses." Verbalising the fact brought the reality of it back to the fore of Prowl's processor. It had been almost possible to forget the cause of all this in the shock of his awakening. He searched back through his data files, looking back past the corrupted horizon left by his crash. "Optimus? The Autobots and humans?"

"Minor scrapes and damages, nothing more." Again, Ratchet's reassurance came fast and without reservation. Again, it was too much to expect the irate mech to leave it there.

The medic's finger-servo stabbed out accusingly, his glare never leaving his patient.

"They're fine. Only one person came close to expiring in this mess." Ratchet sagged, his tone a chagrined mix of rage and resignation. "I just wish to _Primus_ it didn't have to be you."


	12. Part Eleven

"I ain't tellin' you assholes nothin'!"

The man on the other side of the bolted-down table was a walking cliché. His face was pitted by forty-odd years of abuse, disease and neglect. His ragged ponytail was dyed black but showed streaks of dull grey at the roots, where the thinning hair hadn't left pallid flash exposed instead. His gaunt body was clad in black leathers that just emphasised the greasy, artificial lustre of his slicked-back hair. His fingers were adorned with rings probably selected more for their destructive potential than appearance. His skin was pallid, his sunken eyes darting from side to side.

Lennox held them, his own blue eyes ice cold. He leaned forward, his jacket spilling open to reveal both the muscled torso straining his shirt and the revolver tucked into his waistband.

It had taken an effort to get that one past Frye and her precinct lieutenant. It took more to get into the interrogation room, and into the lead chair. Even now, Lennox could feel the detective bridling in her seat beside him. The expression of cold terror on the face of their suspect made the effort worth it.

Lennox didn't react to the defiance. He reached into his jacket, making the movement slow and obvious for the sake of the jumpy detective as much as her suspect.

The photograph of Sunstreaker's alt-mode hit the table face up. Its edges were curled now, a fold running through one corner. It had been in the wars… quite literally. Lennox had carried it in his breast pocket to Poland and back, only rediscovering it at when he stripped down back at base. This petty crook didn't need to know that, any more than the teenage kids who'd pointed the finger at him.

All they needed was to know was that they were in a boat load of trouble.

All they needed to see was the hard-as-nails "special forces" officer who seemed to outrank their local cops, his cold eyes and the anger that clenched both fists and jawline.

"Never seen it."

The loser's eyes darted left and right. A nerve twitching by his jaw quirked his mouth in an odd scowl-smile-scowl-smile dance. Lennox didn't need the slight headshake from Detective Frye to read it. His hand slammed down on the table, fingers splaying open at the last moment, but still landing a resonant impact.

"Look again," he said.

It wasn't just the criminal who'd jumped with that last blow. Frye shot her guest a wary look, before leaning forward. Lennox settled back in his chair, his eyes never moving from the car thief's as she spoke.

"We got the kids, Reggie. Y'know? The punks who you palmed off with a fraction of what that thing's worth." She sucked air past her teeth, shaking her head. "Can't say they were brimming over with gratitude. Or loyalty. We know they sold it to you. All we want to know is what did you do with it after that."

"Yeah? You can't prove nothin'"

"Couple of not-badly-off kids running on the wildside, lawyered up and already signing the plea bargain? Tell me, Reggie, what makes you think you're not going down for a twenty stretch?"

They already had the man's full attention, but until now he'd been slumping in his seat, playing it cool. Now he jerked upright, dragging his eyes from Lennox to stare at the detective beside him.

"For grand theft auto? Even if I was admitting it – which I ain't, un'nerstand? – that's hardly a nickel!"

Frye sat back, looking at Lennox. The major didn't allow a flicker of emotion to show on his face. He fingered the ring he wore, nodding in satisfaction when the voice recorder on the desk died with a splutter of dull sparks. Finally the tech guys had come up with a useful gadget. And finally he'd lost patience to the point where he was prepared to use it, even in the heart of a downtown precinct.

Another evening was drawing in and he'd already spent hours on these gutter-scrapings. Back at the base, Ratchet would be waking Prowl up, if he could. For all Lennox knew, Sideswipe and Sunstreaker might already be gone. He had no time to be subtle, even if he knew how, and there was no way he wanted a record of this.

Detective Frye and the prisoner were both looking at the recording device with surprise. Lennox knew he'd have their undivided attention before long. His expression was utterly cold, utterly determined as he spoke.

"Tell me, Reggie, have you ever had to conceal a corpse?" His question could almost be taken for idle curiosity… almost. "Do you want to know how many lives I've taken, how many you're never going to hear about on the news?" Okay a fair number of them had been Decepticon. The few civilians who'd got caught in the crossfire had been returned to their families, but in a place and with a set of cover stories that still twisted the roil of guilt in Lennox's gut. "You don't. You never will."

It wasn't just the low-life car thief swallowing as he looked at Lennox now. Frye's fists had clenched on the table, her eyes wary and suspicious as she studied her guest. She could hear the ring of truth in his voice, even if Reggie couldn't. Without evidence or even a hint of what he was talking about, she could do nothing about it.

Lennox leaned forward, his voice low.

"If my soldier dies, if you don't tell me anything and everything you know about that car, the state isn't going to have to spring for a twenty stretch, or even that nickel you were talking about. My guy dies, and there's nowhere you can run, nowhere you can hide… nowhere you're going to be safe."

"H…hey!" Reggie rallied. On a better day, Lennox might even give him credit for that. "This is intimidation!"

Frye looked inclined to agree. She looked from the broken voice recorder to Lennox with the first shadows of real unease on her face. Lennox could see her trained body tensing, ready to act. He didn't quite ignore her. He was too well trained for that. But she wasn't his target.

"No." He leaned forward, looking into Reggie's eyes, and wondering how long this loser would last against Ironhide, or even Ratchet. "It's a warning." He slammed his hand on the table again, outstretched fingers across Sunstreaker's image. "The gold-trimmed corvette… where… is… it?"

The man caved.

"Look, I don't know anything about a soldier, okay? I ain't going down for no soldier I don't know nothing about. It was just a car! Nice one, sure, but just a set of wheels!"

"WHERE?!" It was a command bellow, and it echoed off the walls of the small room.

"I don't know! Sweet rides like that, we don't bother with the local crews. Not like we could offload the thing, even if we could 'jack it without a burnout. But if we can't sell local, we can trade, see? Got contacts – Europe, Russia, Asia, yeah well, mostly Asia. They know quality when they see it and they don't ask too many questions. They got the tech, I got the feet on the streets. So I made a few calls, see? Fixed a price. Truck turns up with a crate, loads it up, and it's out of my hands."

Another head had poked itself around the door during the torrent of words, checking on the noise. Frye shot Lennox a considering look before waving away the support. She leaned forward, her hands flat on the table.

"I want names, dates, places."

He didn't hold them back. It would just be helpful if he knew more.

An email address that was never the same twice, burner cell phones at both ends, a bank transfer to an offshore account, and a hard-sided red truck big enough to take the corvette whole. It wasn't much to go on, but it was more than they'd had this morning. He needed to get back to base, and set wheels in motion.

Frye didn't speak to him as she walked him to the door of the precinct. Her eyes burned into his, suspicion and anger mingling there. He'd helped her break a car smuggling ring she hadn't even known existed. Even so, he knew that if he ever set foot in her precinct again, he'd be lucky to walk out a free man. She didn't need to say it. He didn't need to hear it.

They'd both do what needed to be done.

* * *

The guilty silence in medbay had only stretched out perhaps two minutes, but it felt like vorns. Ratchet went through the routine of tests and checks with a permanent scowl. He could feel the tension in the air. He'd feel better though if he was clearer on which of them should be feeling the guilt and why.

He didn't expect his angry criticism to inspire repentance. And there was hardly going to be surprise. Yes, Prowl had almost died. And it was true that there'd been no fatalities in Poland, but only because Prowl's intervention had made it so. Ratchet knew that as well as Prowl himself. They would have been slagged out there without the tactician's advice.

"Thank you." The words might have been ground out of him, almost burning his vocaliser. The medic vented a sigh, shaking his helm. "But you're going to be stuck in here a while longer. I've fixed your systems up, but it will take a few joors before they replace the charge you exhausted on being a slagging idiot. Stand up now and I reckon your frame will let you know exactly what it thinks of the idea. So you're going to sit there, and you're going to sit still! The less strain you put on your spark now, the quicker you'll be back on your feet. I'm not even going to bother pointing out that you could _both_ use the rest right now."

Prowl looked levelly at the medic, one hand rising again to rest above his spark. Ratchet couldn't suppress the shiver of guilt and regret he felt in the face of that gaze. Maybe his tone had come across as a bit more accusational than he'd intended.

"I did not choose this. I will not contest your recommendations without great need."

There was no point arguing with the tactician. Both knew he'd had no choice. Ratchet kept the scowl on his face nonetheless.

"How much do you remember?"

Prowl inclined his head, unsurprised by the question. He'd crashed before his tactical processor could finish filtering its own records and back up the non-classified information to his core databanks.

"I remember intervening, directing the action for several breems and selecting Jolt as a decoy for a bait and snare manoeuvre."

The medic grunted, actually pleased that the losses were less severe than he'd expected. Given Prowl's impaired functioning, even while the processor was active, Ratchet had been willing to take a bet that his memories were sketchy at best. As it was it looked like he'd only lost access to the end game rather than the whole affair. Until he was fit enough to boot the secondary system and run a cross-match on whatever data remained uncorrupted on his tactical databank, he'd have to live with that. It was better than Ratchet had anticipated, but it also stole away his patient's get-out clause.

"Then you remember overriding the first half dozen warning messages from your systems?"

Prowl's silence was eloquent. Ratchet glowered at him and then sighed, turning away from his more vocal patient and back towards the warrior lying on the berth opposite. Sideswipe's murmurs had faded into silence over the last day, the glow in his optics dim and unseeing. His systems wheezed, errant signals from Sunstreaker distorting them and leaving his spark-pulse erratic and precarious. Ratchet was once again watching the youngling he had tended sink towards the matrix, and once again helpless to prevent it. He intended no more than a quick, impotent check of Sideswipe's vitals before leaving both front-liner and tactician to rest and returning to his office. The feeling of Prowl's optics following his movements, and the frown on his patient's face when Ratchet glanced back at him, stopped him in his tracks.

"Sideswipe… there was something…?"

Ratchet mirrored his friend's frown, taken aback by the uncharacteristic lack of certainty in Prowl's voice. The tactician swung his legs over the edge of the berth, leaning forward and gazing blankly at the floor as he wracked his processor for hints of whatever it was he half-remembered.

"Don't you dare!"

The last thing Prowl needed was to strain his processor now. Ratchet braced himself, his sensors on maximum, ready to intervene if he got so much as a slagging suggestion that his patient was about to engage his tactical systems. For a moment it looked as if Prowl was tempted. Whatever he'd noticed while working in the device's encrypted databanks had only left the most fleeting of impressions on his core processor.

"Sideswipe… Sunstreaker… There was something, just as I was about to shut down my tactical core. I tried to stretch it out. Something… Coordinates…?"

Ratchet listened to him articulate those glimpses and quite suddenly found himself praying Prowl could take them further after all. The tactician's voice faltered. His fists clenched. Sensors primed, Ratchet could see the increased power drain to his core processor and wondered how long he dared let the fragile mech take even so small a risk.

Silence fell, stretching the seconds into vorns as Prowl focussed on those hints. Then the mech gasped, his gaze snapping up to lock on their semi-conscious front-liner.

"_Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sunstreaker_."

There was a buzz in Sideswipe's vocaliser, his automatic systems in a losing battle against his frame's degeneration as they recited a string of coordinates. They were shifted from those he'd given before, but no more believable. If anything, Ratchet realised queasily, they were buried still deeper below the lifeless ocean floor. Prowl nodded, unsurprised, before his expression cleared into careful neutrality.

"_Sideswipe, executive command: report location Sideswipe_."

Ratchet blinked, his optics cycling through a reboot first at the pointlessness of the question and then again when the stricken mech, lying less than three metres in front of them, answered it.

A mech's location grid was calibrated against the local geomagnetic and gravitational fields, modified by a constantly-updated unconscious electrical and atmospheric map. Ratchet knew for a fact that those basic orientation systems were still active in his red hellion. Even if Sideswipe had lost them, his systems should report his last known position, or perhaps a random string of numbers that could place him anywhere in the infinity of space-time. There was no way he could place himself in the same location, to within a few tens of metres, as his lost brother.

Prowl's backstruts straightened, his optics blazing. He pushed to his feet, only for his medic to catch him when his legs buckled after two steps. There was resistance from Prowl as Ratchet pushed him back down, but it was a weak and feeble thing.

"Let me up. Optimus… I have to tell him!"

Ratchet's fingers tightened on the dull grey armour, his finger servos applying enough pressure to attract the exhausted tactician's attention.

"Tell me."

"Surface vessel. Latitude: 3.1405 North, Longitude: 142.712 West, speed: 72.4 km/h, bearing: -84 degrees magnetic."

Prowl's optics flickered, the effort of reaching his conclusion exhausting his non-existent energy reserves. Ratchet eased his patient down to lie the berth, taking the time to check that Prowl was entering a normal recharge. Already though, he'd passed on the coordinates. Already he was daring to hope.

* * *

"Frag!" Robert Epps' voice held the same tight mixture of hope and trepidation that everyone clustered around the gantry shared. Beside him, peering into the same monitor as he unzipped his jacket, a newly returned William Lennox reached out to thump his second's shoulder, not so much in rebuke for the profanity as in acknowledgement of the shared emotion that inspired it.

The major looked up at the Cybertronians around him, voicing the question for them all.

"He's right, there's a boat there - cargo ship from the satellite images. Question is: why did he point us to it? If what that loser told me in the city was true… Damn, there are too many unknowns. Are we looking for Sunstreaker when we get there, or just another clue to follow up?"

Ironhide's cannons cycled, the whine as they charged the perfect counterpart to the rising sense of excitement. "I say we go find out."

Optimus Prime folded his arms, his battle mask deploying with a decisive click.

"Agreed."


	13. Part Twelve

Technically, these were international waters, and this… well, this was probably piracy.

Yeah… tell that to someone who gave a damn.

"Cargo vessel _Sensa Thetford_ – you are carrying contraband. Hold your speed and course!"

That was it, the third warning from their pilot to the ship below. That was all they were getting.

Lennox gestured to the crewman behind him, and the helicopter's side-door slid open, sending wind howling through the confined space. With an economical movement, he pulled his goggles down, his hands running over his weapon in a final check. Around him, the rest of his squad was doing the same, their movements rapid and competent. They all finished at the same time, and Lennox gathered the expected nods in a rapid circuit before tapping his earpiece.

"Ratchet, Bumblebee?"

"Get on with it!"

"Ready to roll!"

"Epps, report."

"Ready."

Lennox nodded, his expression shutting down into a familiar grim mask.

"Alpha squad, beta squad: go."

The descent lines unravelled in unison, their coils hitting the deck below. Black-clad, masked and heavily armed, the twelve NEST agents landed in ready-crouches. Within moments, their semi-automatics were steadied against their shoulders, deployed to cover every direction. The three large, matt-black assault helicopters hovering overhead had brought the ship's captain out onto the superstructure, and his crew on deck. Standard complement for a Panamax-class container ship was between seventeen and twenty-one officers and crew. What the _Thetford_ was carrying was anyone's guess – the records NEST had been able to hack at short notice were not exactly forthcoming on the under-qualified, likely sub-legal crew. Lennox scanned the wide-eyed, shocked, and occasionally furious faces around him and counted nineteen. Most of them were yelling, a few gesturing with tools that could second as weapons at a pinch. The captain had grabbed a loud-hailer from somewhere and was shouting at them to leave before the authorities arrived.

No chance of that… at least not until NEST was long gone. Open waters stretched for two hundred miles in every direction before they reached the nearest ship. Even getting out here had pushed the assault 'copters pretty damn close to their limit. And that meant he needed to get this sorted, and need to get it sorted soon.

"No one move!" Lennox added his voice to the chaos of shouted commands and threats flying in both directions. He flicked his weapon into non-repeating mode and fired a single round, careful to send it away from the deck and over the sea where it could fall without harm. "I said: _No one move!_"

The percussion echoed off the steel hull, and the deck structure rising amidships. It echoed too from the stack upon stack of sealed shipping containers, slotted together like some parody of a child's Lego creation. This Panamax wasn't the biggest container ship on the ocean waves, not by a long shot, but for a miniscule human standing on its deck, it was plenty big enough.

Big enough to stay afloat with a few tonnes more aboard.

"Ratchet – "

"Finally!" The medic didn't give him time to finish the command. There was a roar from the big 'copters, a throaty engine note that contrasted sharply with the whine of their rotors. Ratchet drove from the rear hatch in vehicle form, the emergency vehicle hanging in mid-air above Lennox for a single, silent moment. Then Ratchet transformed, his bulky form twisting through space to land on the highest stack of containers, with 'Bee just seconds behind him.

The ship could take the weight, but even its vast metal bulk rocked under the impact of two free-falling Autobots.

Lennox gritted his teeth, his gun still braced against his shoulder as he swayed. It could be worse. It had taken a series of arguments about both fuel and displaced weight to keep Ironhide and Prime from joining the party.

Lennox's warning shot had won a brief silence. Ratchet's arrival stretched that out, and changed the tone of the cries when they did eventually arise. Epps already had Beta squad circling the crew, rounding them up with shouts, gestures and never-resting semi-automatics. Half of the deck-hands were still staring, open mouthed. The other half were crying, or praying, or both, certain that the devil was walking amongst them clad in sheet metal.

Lennox himself jogged to the base of the bridge structure, his own weapon held waist high as he intercepted a pale-faced captain at the bottom of the iron stairs. He didn't give the man time to speak, had no real interest in what he was going to say.

"Captain, tell your men to stand down. We're here for one thing, and one thing only. We take it and we're gone. This never happened."

Whether it was the note of command in Lennox's voice, the weapon in his hand, the assault helicopters still hovering overhead or the giant alien robots clambering across his deck, the middle-aged captain didn't seem inclined to argue. His accent was thick enough to obscure his reply, if he was speaking English at all, but Lennox was pretty sure "take whatever the frag you want" summed up the sentiment behind it.

Ratchet was moving towards the rear of the ship, Bumblebee in his shadow. Lennox snapped out an order, leaving his squad to double up with Epps', keeping the crew in order and watching for any unaccounted-for `heroes' who might cause trouble. The major himself jogged forward along gantries and around obstructions, tapping his comms ear bud rather than shouting to make himself heard.

"Ratchet, report!"

"He's here. Somewhere. There's a signal, but it's fragging weak and these damn boxes keep scattering it."

Ratchet gave a shove, his entire frame vibrating with frustration, and Lennox winced as the topmost shipping container on the pile beside him slipped overboard. He only hoped the ship's owners had insurance… although quite how this loss would be classified by the loss adjusters he had no idea. The thought flashed through his mind, come and gone in moments. The unease lingered as he mulled over Ratchet's words. Sunny was actually here, within a few tens of metres, and that was more than he'd dreamed possible a day ago. But every second counted, and too many were passing as Ratchet quartered the ship, homing in on a pile of truck-sized crates stacked maybe eight high, three wide and five deep on the aft deck. They were each trimmed differently, some in faded grey, others pallid green or muddy blue, with logos and company names barely visible through a layer of grime. All except…

"The red one!" Lennox yelled the words, and Ratchet half-turned to look at him. Lennox gestured to a crate buried deep enough that he'd barely caught a glimpse of it between its fellows. It wasn't the only red-painted container aboard, true, but it was the only one in Ratchet's target pile. The car-thief Reggie may have been a drug-addled loser, but there was one thing he'd been clear about. "Sunny was taken in a red crate!"

The Autobots didn't waste time on questions. Bumblebee put his shoulder to a pile of crates, and Ratchet lent his own huge mass to the effort. The topmost of the pile tumbled, one corner caving in as it hit the deck before tumbling into the sea. The others shifted slowly… so slowly…

Running into the narrow gap that had opened between two towering stacks wasn't the smartest thing Lennox had ever done. Frankly, he didn't care. He shouldered his gun, lowered his head and ran for it, trying to ignore the precarious balance of the shifting cargo and the creaking all around him. Five seconds of breathless terror later, he slammed into the red metal door. The shipping containers were still moving around him, Ratchet and 'Bee still trying to get space to excavate this well-buried crate. There was barely room for Lennox to crack the door open, just wide enough to slip his slender form inside. He twisted as he did so, his gun scraping against his spine as he squeezed through.

The interior was dark, the sliver of light coming through the door barely enough to shape the shadows. Lennox grabbed the flashlight from his belt, raising it to shoulder height as he flicked it on. The clustered LEDs flared with acrid white light. Blinking rapidly, Lennox looked around.

His heart fell, the circle of light from his torch flicking from label to label as he scanned dull brown cardboard boxes and industrial-sized canisters of paint. Somewhere beyond the range of his torch, one of those cans must have fallen open, or perhaps there were other petrochemicals deeper inside. His head was already spinning from the fumes… and hope rekindled.

"Sunny?"

Ratchet had said the warrior was suffering from carbon fumes. Surely that couldn't be a coincidence?

"Sunny?!"

He pushed forward, finding a way between the stacked goods, shoving to open one when he couldn't see a clear path.

He could still be wrong. Maybe the entire container was like this – filled with perfectly normal goods, shipped by perfectly legitimate merchants. Or maybe…

The beam of his torch fell away into a sudden void, the major stumbling a little as he found his path suddenly open.

There was something in front of him – something bulky, hidden by a dull green tarpaulin.

"Sunstreaker?"

He grabbed the thick sheet, tugging with all his strength. There was a little give, but not enough, not nearly enough! He drew the hunting knife from his belt in a single smooth movement, sawing through a bunched handful of fabric, desperate to see what lay beneath.

The metal surface was dull, the reflections a leaden grey in the beam of the flashlight, but smooth, oh, so smooth. Lennox gasped, relief and anxiety leaving him dizzy. Nothing on Earth could be as perfect as Sunstreaker's finish, as even and beautiful.

Still holding the slashed tarp, Lennox gave it another yank, feeling the tear stretch. The plasticised cloth fell away from the elegant contours of a front bumper that Lennox had seen haunting both wistful dreams and bitter nightmares, but Sunny was still silent, unresponsive.

The container was moving, rocking and trembling as the other bots fought their way through to it. Maybe it was the vibration that knocked him off his feet, or maybe just his knees giving out, but Lennox found himself on the floor of the container, diving forwards and groping blindly under the still half-concealed chassis.

He knew it when he found it. His fingers closed around the fist-sized box, its metal shell cold, its sharp edges alien to Sunny's smooth curves.

There was the long drawn out screech of tearing steel. Lennox blinked furiously, staring up through the unpeeled lid of the container, into giant faces full of concern and hope.

"Well, what the frag are you waiting for?"

Lennox yanked and rolled clear at the same moment, his fist closing around the car-killer he removed as if he could crush it out of existence. Already Ratchet was reaching into the container, lifting the inert form of Sunstreaker's alt mode out through the roof. Bumblebee waited until the pair were clear before reaching in himself, offering Lennox his hand. Exhausted from the adrenaline backwash, bruised from his exertions, the major was only too happy to accept it.

Together they watched, relief warring with fear, as Ratchet worked.

* * *

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe lay side by side, their colours mingling. Sunstreaker's gold frame reflected his brother's metallic red and vice versa, until they seemed almost to merge into one another.

That was as it should be.

Optimus Prime still couldn't quite believe he was seeing it.

He sat in silence beside the pushed-together berths, his optics resting on the twins' steadily improving status displays, his processor lost in meditation and prayers of thanks.

It had been close. His ever-troublesome, ever-loyal, ever-spectacular warriors had been no more than minutes from guttering… perhaps seconds. Even as Lennox and Ratchet boarded the cargo ship, Optimus had been here, lending his strength and that of the Matrix he carried to his wounded soldiers. He'd thought they were too late when Sideswipe convulsed, his readings flaring into chaos. Then Sideswipe settled and Lennox's voice came over the com, reporting that the car-killer had been removed and Sunstreaker was secure.

In all his long life, Optimus Prime had rarely been so relieved and joyful to acknowledge a single report. Even now, hours later, as he watched over the recovering twins and his recharging lieutenant, that joy burned strong and bright.

"You found him."

Prowl's voice startled him, although it shouldn't have done. His second had always moved with silent grace, and roused from recharge the same way. Ratchet had warned him the tactician would likely wake soon, even as Optimus chivvied the medic to his first real rest in days. Stilling his shock, Optimus nodded, his helm turning to regard his other deep source of concern.

"Thanks to your deduction." Prime kept his voice to the same low pitch as his Second's. Neither doubted that Ratchet had systems monitoring medbay for any disturbance. Neither wanted to wake the medic from his well-deserved recharge. Optimus raised a brow ridge, letting a small smile show on his faceplates as he went on. "Which the strategists of NEST are still unable to reproduce."

Prowl paused, glancing up at Optimus with slight surprise before continuing to push himself upright on his berth. "The disruption to Sideswipe's programming left him unable to resolve his own unconscious system readouts to those transiting the bond from his twin."

"Hence reporting the same location for them both?"

"Indeed."

Prime frowned, unable to follow his tactician's reasoning, even with the clue.

"He was giving an average of their coordinate positions."

Prowl said it ask if it was the most natural thing in the world. Maybe it was. Sideswipe's unconscious systems had cared for nothing but the shortest route to his twin. A line projected between them, linking them with scant regard for the curvature of this small planet, or the fact that the mid-point lay well beneath its surface.

The Prime frowned, checking the numbers again, wondering where he'd gone wrong.

"Not a straight mean." Optimus ran the calculation twice before speaking, through embarrassment in case he had made a mistake rather than doubt in Prowl's analysis.

His second in command eased himself to his pedes with a small sigh. The tall, door-winged mech moved slowly and with caution, as if testing his balance as he went. Optimus watched, his sensors extended no more than politeness dictated, but tuned to his lieutenant nonetheless. If Prowl needed help, he would be at the mech's side in moments. If he didn't, then Prime would not steal his friend's dignity from him. The Praxian glanced aside, his expression pensive before offering a silent nod of acknowledgement.

He reached Prime without assistance, one servo reaching out to touch the back of the larger mech's chair, either for support or to help calibrate his gyroscopic sensors.

Together, they looked down over the twins they had both known as younglings. Prowl's optics flicked over the medical displays, his door-wings twitching a little.

"Stasis lock?"

"Ratchet was able to establish stasis a quarter joor ago. Their self-repair is working now to correct the damage."

Prowl's optics dimmed, his vents faltering a little as he tensed and then relaxed his entire frame.

"They will recover completely."

"They will."

Prowl nodded, moving to sit on a nearby berth, his door-wings drooping a little.

"Sideswipe reported a weighted mean," he clarified, picking up on his Prime's earlier query. "The twins' core programming was honed in the pits of Kaon. They instinctually adjust calculations to apply a significance rating based on subject mass and momentum – the better to calculate applied force and threat level."

It made sense. Optimus ran the numbers without even thinking about it, the solution Prowl had identified obvious in retrospect. That was the gift his second brought them – the skill of seeing the logic that escaped all others.

At least, that was one of the gifts. Optimus loved Prowl for far more than his utility, and had missed his friend's compassion, unstinting loyalty and sly humour with each passing year of their diaspora.

The loyalty was beyond question, the compassion there whenever Prowl looked at the twins, or glanced at his Prime… the humour….

Optimus turned, capturing his second's optics, and was dismayed when Prowl looked down and away.

"Prowl…"

"What has Ratchet told you?"

Optimus paused, weighing his words carefully, wondering how to paraphrase his medic's exhausted ranting. His vents hitched, his systems reacting to his emotions, even as he tried to block them from his vocalisor.

"He told me that you were determined to reach help, and that you need it. He insists that you remain confined to base. And… he told me that Jazz wished you to survive. That he tried to give you the strength he no longer had, at the end. Ratchet said that Jazz pleaded with you to go on, and with Primus to permit it."

The sharp look from Prowl was a surprise. His friend studied Prime's faceplates, as if searching for more, probing for any hint of a lie or omission. Several sparkbeats passed before Prowl gave a short sharp nod and once again turned away.

"I do not wish to talk about Jazz."

It might have been a slap in the face. Optimus didn't react outwardly, but it took all his strength of will not to, and it would be foolish to think Prowl ignorant of his raised spark pulse and hitching vents. He nodded slowly. He could compel his second to talk, of course – both as Prowl's commanding officer and as his Prime. But not as his friend.

He schooled his voice to matter-of-fact acceptance, trying not to show his hurt at the rejection. "Would it help if I took you to see his frame?"

Now it was the turn of Prowl's vents to falter. It was a moment before the mech looked up, his optics flicking to Prime's for a moment before moving on.

"No."

It was as far as Optimus dared push. There would be time to help Prowl, he hoped, over the coming years, but it would have to be on the bereaved mech's terms, not on Prime's or anyone else's. Nonetheless, there was a question he still needed answered.

"Will you stay with us?"

Prowl didn't look at him, didn't move. For a few minutes, Optimus thought he would not answer the question one way or the other.

"I…" Prowl's vocaliser hummed, articulating his uncertainty. "I am uncertain."

Prime nodded, letting his own vocaliser rumble. "You are loved here. And welcomed. Never doubt those truths."

Prowl tilted his helm, looking sidelong at his Prime. "And needed?"

Optimus Prime's faceplates quirked in a rueful smile. "And now you are trying to trap me." He shook his helm. "I would not have you held captive by some misplaced sense of duty, Prowl. Freedom is the right of all sentient beings – including my officers. You and Jazz taught me that, many vorns ago." He reached out, his servo-tips resting lightly on his friend's arm. The touch drew Prowl's optics up, unwilling, to his Prime's face. "Of course, I need you. I have missed every moment of your counsel, as well as your company. If you wish to serve, then yes, I would welcome your return to our ranks with joy and relief. But I need to know you are content, and that you are doing what you wish and believe to be right, more."

Prowl shifted, breaking the contact between them. He was silent, letting the echoes of Optimus Prime's words fade into the quiet of medbay. The stillness of Cybertronians was alien to their human allies and Ratchet's domain was an oasis of peace against the chaos of NEST. A distant murmur penetrated the thin walls, but it was muted, meaning lost and blended almost to music. Outside there was politics and planning and the constant effort to understand their new world. Inside nothing would disturb the patients, or those tending them.

Prime rested his servos in his lap, his optics once more on the twins, enjoying the familiarity of the moment, and the company as his long-missed friend thought. It might have been a few minutes before Prowl spoke or hours.

"Thank you."

The mech's optics were noticeably dimmer than they had been when he woke. Ratchet had warned Optimus about that too. Prowl had exhausted his reserves reaching Earth. He would have little stamina, at least until he assimilated the repairs and refined fuel Ratchet was providing. His periods of full alertness would be short and end abruptly for some time to come, the joors of recharge and weariness lasting long enough to test the mech's patience.

Right now, he was swaying a little, his door-wings shifting to balance him, and Optimus struggled against the urge to reach out with an offer of support.

"Thank you for what, Prowl?"

"For everything." Maybe it was the power deficit, but Prowl's optics seemed a deeper blue than ever before. Prime had seen that depth of colour in his Third from time to time, when Jazz was pensive or troubled, but it was curiously jarring to see in his Second.

Prowl stood, and this time his lurch to one side before straightening was unmistakeable. His door-wings flared wide and low, his helm coming up in a gesture of unconscious defiance against his own weakness. He bowed, unsteadily, one hand coming up to his spark in a mark of respect to his Prime.

"I am not well, Optimus. This is fact. So, lest I am unable to say this at a more opportune time: Thank you for defying tyranny, for showing others that such defiance is both necessary and possible. Thank you for leading a people who were lost without you, for guiding my mate and I along a path that appeared dark and bleak and keeping alive within us the possibility of light. Thank you for your friendship, for never giving up, and for never failing us."

Prime was on his feet, his huge hands engulfing his friend's shoulders, his helm shaking in automatic negation as he tried to assimilate the words. The last few cut like a knife, the memory of failures great and small tormenting him – none so much as the worst failure of all.

"Optimus…" Now Prowl reached up, his servo resting on Optimus Prime's chest-plate in a gesture that mingled friendship with respect. "Jazz's death was not your fault."

What little strength Prowl had went into catching his claws between the folds of his friend's chest-plate, holding Optimus in place as the Prime tried to pull away.

"On the brink of the AllSpark, my bondmate reached out to me. I saw through his optics. I thought with his thoughts and our sparks pulsed as one. There was no hesitation and no accusation in his spark. Jazz died knowing you were fighting, just as he was fighting, as were Ratchet and Ironhide, and that none of you could change your role in what was to come, any more than you could change what you were. There was no failure there, and his regrets were all for me – not for you or the choices we made. Never for that."

Prowl's optics flickered, and Optimus found his grip on Prowl's shoulders was suddenly all that supported his friend's weight. His second was still conscious, but his systems, motor systems included, were shutting down in the effort to sustain his processor.

Optimus Prime looked down into a familiar small smile. He snorted. "You timed this conversation deliberately, didn't you?"

Prowl's vocaliser hummed static, the flickers of his optics growing more pronounced. "I _am_ a tactician."

Prime scooped his friend up as the purr of active systems faded. An anxious moment later, he lay Prowl on a berth and allowed his vents to even out. The medical display wasn't green, true, but the amber lights across the board were better than reds and no worse than he expected. The mech was in recharge, his systems drawing power from the berth's ambient field and conserving his spark's strength at the same time.

Prime lay a hand on his friend's chest-plate, frowning a little as he felt a strange flutter in Prowl's field. Deep inside his own chest, the Matrix responded, a pulse of warmth and power passing down his arm and through his outspread servo. The sensation startled him, come and gone too rapidly for him to truly process. Again Optimus Prime glanced at the displays, checking for red lights, or any change at all, and venting a sigh when he saw none.

There would be time to talk more to Prowl later. For the moment, he returned to his seat, and his vigil over his sleeping soldiers.


	14. Part Thirteen

For the first time in far, far too long he roused from recharge without pain.

He'd learnt to still his speech centre before recharging near others, to wake with a silent scream rather than one that drew unwelcome attention. It would be vorns yet before he could return to consciousness without feeling his mate's loss anew. Even now, he knew this respite was fleeting.

Warmth and comfort filled him nonetheless. They spread from his spark, from the gentle energy that soothed him and grieved with him at one and the same time.

Prowl had experienced the touch of the divine only rarely – once, that he recalled, while he guarded the AllSpark at Simfur, and again on the day Praxus died, when Optimus Prime stood helpless and only the swelling touch of the Matrix saved them all from despair. He recognised the sensation now, and for just a moment he allowed himself to accept the comfort offered.

Somewhere outside and within them all, Lord Primus was watching over Prowl, and weeping with him. Somewhere in the Well, Jazz rested, and knew peace not only for a fleeting moment but for eternity.

The reminder helped, a little, the comfort he derived from it bittersweet.

His field shifted, the tiny sparklet vibrating against his own spark still dormant, but strengthened by the energy the Matrix had gifted them both. The instinct to protect the infant was irresistible. Prowl felt the cool surface of his chest-plate under his servo-tips. He booted his optics, and already the peace of his awakening was fading.

His outspread servos could do nothing to shield Jazz's sparkling from the miseries of the world. Even if a miracle occurred, and the little one survived long enough to experience them, what kind of life was Prowl gifting him? He would never know one of his parents. In all probability he would be robbed of them both. Alone, innocent, in the midst of a war not of his making, what future could the infant expect?

The questions circled in his processor, the last echoes of the Matrix's touch drowned out by Prowl's anguish. He'd set his fears aside for a few days, focussing at least some of his anxiety on Sunstreaker and Sideswipe. Now he felt the keen rising again in his spark, and thanked Primus again that he'd thought to block his vocaliser.

Ratchet might not have been fooled, but Ratchet was still in recharge. Buoyed by the Matrix's gift, Prowl himself had 'charged for only a fraction of a cycle, waking long before he expected to. Across the room, he could see Optimus Prime's bulky form still keeping vigil beside the twins' berths. Automatically, his processor hardly on the task, Prowl noted the low-pitched purr of his friend's systems. He knew it well, and couldn't help but be grateful that Optimus had slipped into a light recharge himself. That would make this easier.

The thought passed through his processor before he was consciously aware of his decision. As soon as it had, there was no avoiding it. Prime's words from earlier played through his memory files, together with his own all-too-feeble replies.

He slipped from his medical berth with silent grace, reaching into the NEST systems to override any alarm that might alert Ratchet or others to his actions. He watched Optimus Prime carefully, a precisely tuned sedative ready for deployment at a moment's notice. He couldn't take an argument. Not now.

There was something else he had to do.

* * *

"Prime?" Ironhide pitched his voice in an intense whisper. His servo gripped Optimus Prime's shoulder, giving it a hard shake. "Slag it, Prime, wake up!"

Prime stirred, the hum of his systems picking up a few notches. Ironhide's worried optics flickered over the room again, passing over the resting twins with a strong sense of relief, and glancing at the empty berth against the far wall with an equally strong alarm.

"Ironhide?"

"Shh…" Ironhide's grip tightened, his hissed warning carrying further than he would like. "Wake Ratch, and you'll regret it."

Optimus blinked at him, his optics cycling through a quick reboot.

"What…?" Prime's optics swept the room, checking on Sideswipe and Sunstreaker and moving on. The big engine stalled and then raced. He stood abruptly, turning on the spot to better scan the entirety of the medical centre and forcing Ironhide to step back. "Where's Prowl?"

"Slag!" The curse came from ankle level. Ironhide had left Lennox by the door, striding forward to wake his Prime. Now the major had followed, peering up at the two mechs towering above him. "We were hoping you knew."

Optimus Prime didn't speak. He reached down, and gathered Lennox up – the uninvited action speaking clearly of his distraction. Ironhide followed his Prime towards the door, brimming over with questions he daren't ask in the quiet of medbay.

He caught the heavy door before it could slam, and a moment later, Jolt took it from him, slipping past to watch the twins in response to Prime's commed order.

Night had fallen across the NEST base. Which night, Ironhide couldn't be sure. He'd lost track of the Earth days at some point in this whole slagging affair. Maybe it was Prowl's return, maybe only Cybertronian scales could encapsulate the epicness of twin-sized messes, but for the first time since he arrived, Ironhide was thinking in terms of orns rather than mere twenty-four hour days.

Somehow that didn't make the seconds that passed as Prime led the way back into the main hangar, and placed Lennox safely on the gantry, seem any shorter. Lennox looked worried, but also wary, waiting for Prime to take the lead. Ironhide waited too, his cannons whirring in agitation. Prime's helm tilted, his expression carefully neutral and his optics distant. He managed to keep his voice almost level when he finally spoke.

"Prowl is not responding to my communications. No one saw him leave?"

Ironhide didn't need to answer, not when his expression spoke for him. Lennox scowled across the gantry, shaking his head. "If any of the sentries caught sight of him they haven't reported it."

"Indeed." Optimus nodded once. Then the orders started rolling out, the broadcast channel echoed on the displays behind the human major.

… _Optimus Prime to NEST sentries, all Autobots: medical priority. Report location of SIC Prowl if known, else locate. Coordinate sweeps through command as required…_

Lennox shook his head. "Slag it. One full day, that's all I wanted. Was one day with things actually going right too much to ask for?" He sighed, nodding as the duty officer looked to him for confirmation. The expression he turned on Prime was grim.

"You're worried he might have gone for a walk and passed out somewhere? Might be unable to answer?"

"Prowl's not fond of medbay, but he's smart." The whirr of Ironhide's cannons were a counterpoint to his gruff voice. He folded his arms and gave a shake of his helm. "If Ratchet told him to stay put, he wouldn't just wonder off on a whim."

The frown on Lennox's face deepened. The major rubbed his brow, accustomed by now to the suddenness of Autobot crises but no less wearied by them. "Could he have been confused? He's spent more time unconscious than awake since that big crash."

Now Ironhide's snort was one of wry amusement. "You think even Optimus could get Ratch to recharge if Prowl was still that bad?" He shook his helm, frustrated. "If Prowl got out of there without setting off Ratchet's alarms, _or_ waking Prime, then he knew exactly what he was doing."

On the screen, the first wave of negative reports was coming through. Ironhide paced, swerving to avoid Bumblebee as the young scout arrived at the command centre. 'Bee transformed, the look he threw in Prime's direction nervous. Optimus nodded to his scout, a small gesture indicating the monitor equipment. Bumblebee chirped his agreement, taking over the coordination of the new search. At least this one had some degree of constraint. It wasn't as if Prowl could have got far, or been spirited away by human thieves as Sunstreaker had been. On the other hand, those humans hadn't known they were being hunted. Prowl, Ironhide was quite sure, knew exactly what to expect.

"We're not going to find him, are we?" Ironhide swore, one fist landing in the other palm as his frustration escaped him. "Not until he's good and ready. This is Prowl we're talking about. He was specced for high end stealth _before_ he bonded with the sneakiest mech in the army!"

Lennox rubbed his brow again, and Ironhide didn't need medical grade scanners to tell the human was nursing a headache.

"Okay, so he needed time to think. What's the fuss? You keep telling me he's smart, so he'll call if he needs help, right? Wait 'till he's low on power and he'll be back of his own accord."

"Perhaps." Prime had been standing, statue-stiff, his optics gazing into nowhere. It was almost a shock to hear him speak, more so to hear what he had to say. The Prime paused, his words heavy and sombre. "If Prowl chooses to leave us, I cannot and will not stop him. I must respect my friend's decisions. However… I am concerned Prowl's judgement on matters of his own health and well-being may have become compromised. When he chose to sacrifice himself for our victory in Poland, I was… dismayed. His sense of self-worth…"

Ironhide scowled, shaking his helm. "Prime, you know fragging well that Prowl would have pulled our afts out of the fire even before Jazz died."

Optimus Prime tilted his head in reluctant acknowledgement. Ironhide nodded himself in satisfaction. The emotion faded when he detected the increase in Lennox's pulse rate and the perspiration on the human's brow. The major swallowed hard.

"Prime, are you telling me one of your officers may be suicidal?"

"Frag no!"

"Prowl wouldn't do that, not to Jazz!"

Ironhide and Bumblebee spoke over one another, both vehement. Both fell silent after their initial outbursts, their optics on Prime. He took longer to consider his response… long enough that Ironhide felt his spark dim and his frame tighten around him. Bumblebee, looking over from the monitor station, had stopped even pretending not to listen.

"Actively, no. Prowl is committed to our cause, and is aware of his own importance to it. I do not believe he would have reached Earth without a genuine determination underlying his actions. However, his bond-mate's deactivation has left Prowl's health fragile. As Ratchet has made clear to me, Prowl remains in a serious condition and while some degree of recovery is possible, he is unlikely to improve significantly on a timescale of human years and could easily deteriorate further. I fear that he may be discouraged, sufficiently so to ignore warning signs that others might register. I am quite certain that his grief runs deeper than I can articulate."

Ironhide cycled his cannons, his plating ruffling in his discomfort. He gave a short nod, not denying anything his Prime said. Prime shook his helm.

"I am uncomfortable with the knowledge that Prowl is alone. I fear that he will not be as responsive to the needs of his frame as his condition truly merits."

Lennox swallowed hard. Ironhide could read the questions still building within him, but knew the major would never ask them. NEST's human soldiers had their own codes, just as the Cybertronians did. All of them knew what war and loss could do to a spark – and shared that knowledge in grim silence.

In the end it was Bumblebee who broke the silence. The youngling chirred uneasily.

"Optimus, do you think Prowl might have gone to see…?" his question trailed off. He hardly needed to finish it. Both Ironhide and Optimus could follow his chain of thought all too easily.

Prime inclined his helm. "The thought had occurred to me. I shall investigate." He transformed, rumbling out of the hangar with slow deliberation.

Ironhide shook his helm. He turned to the gantry and nodded to Bumblebee. "I've got this. Go join the search, Bumblebee. And pray to Primus we find him before Ratchet wakes up."

* * *

"Gone? What the frag do you mean he's gone? He has to be somewhere!"

Swimming his way out of stasis lock to hear Ratchet's angry yells was a comfortingly familiar occurrence. For once though, Sideswipe was pretty sure the words couldn't apply to him. For a worried moment, shadowed by unfocused memories of pain and distress, he wondered if Ratchet was shouting about Sunstreaker. The fear came and went in moments. Sunny felt off – ill or hurt – but his spark pulsed warm and reassuring, somewhere close enough that Sideswipe knew he'd be able to reach out and touch his brother.

"Ratchet." Prime's voice. Despite his lingering unease, Sideswipe felt instantly better, just hearing those deep tones. "Please remain calm."

"_Calm?!_" Ratchet's near-screech wiped out any hint of comfort. "Our slagging second is barely fit to be upright, let alone wondering off without telling anyone! You were meant to be watching him!"

Prowl? Sideswipe's optics flared into life. His processor flared too, the sharp stab of pain telling him it wasn't ready for the sudden input. His motor processes hadn't even responded to his impulse, their initialising algorithms lagging his processor.

"I believed he would recharge for rather longer."

"He would have done, if someone hadn't decided to get fancy with the Matrix!"

Sideswipe's optics flicked from medic to Prime, his processor still reeling a little as he tried to catch up with the conversation. Prowl was here? He cycled his vocaliser, about to ask the question, and Ratchet's finger stabbed out in his direction, the medic not even looking at his patient.

"Move, and you'll regret it. I'll take your plating and have it for fancy dress! I don't have time to deal with you right now."

Sideswipe stilled his vocaliser. There were times you could push Ratchet and get away with no more than an idly-swung warning wrench. Vorns of experience told him this wasn't one of them.

"Optimus, I want Prowl back on that berth, and I want him there now."

Sideswipe followed the wave of Ratchet's hand automatically. His frame loosening now, he pushed himself up on one elbow, peering across the room. There was indeed an empty berth there, but Sideswipe's attention was distracted by something closer and far more immediate to him.

Sunny's frame was perfect, his plating smooth, his finish immaculate. There was no sign of damage, at least that his brother could make out. Sideswipe frowned nonetheless, trying to resist the urge to reach out and touch his twin. Sunny was going to be okay. Sides was sure of that, and the medical monitors above their berths confirmed it, but he could fell his twin aching all over. Sunstreaker's systems grumbled a long way from their usual fine-tuned rhythms. Sideswipe himself had a backlog of systems errors and enough retuning to do to keep him busy for weeks. Whatever had happened – and Sideswipe had only the haziest memories of alarm, need and pain – it had to have been serious.

Serious enough to bring Prowl to their aid?

Sideswipe looked up, again ready to ask questions, and again his vocaliser faltered. This time though, it wasn't a threat from Ratchet that silenced him, but the expression on Optimus Prime's drawn faceplates.

The heat of Ratchet's scowl could have melted lead. He saw it too. "You checked…?"

"Indeed." Prime nodded slowly. "And our forces continue to search the base. However, I fear that if Prowl has not yet been found, he does not wish to be."

Ratchet snorted. "Since when has 'wishing' been a valid reason to leave medbay _without my permission_?"

Optimus sighed, his ambivalence clear. "Ratchet… when he arrived, I told Prowl we would not keep him here if staying proved too difficult. He fought so hard to reach us... Injured or not, he has shown himself capable of rational, reasoned thought. If our friend cannot... cannot abide with us, I have no grounds on which to recant my initial promise."

Ratchet paced in front of his Prime, the medic's circular saw whining in nervous reaction. The medic's faceplates worked through expression after expression, his inner conflict apparent.

"And if there was an additional factor that might be distorting things for him, affecting his decision making?"

Prime's optics cycled. The Prime stilled, silent for a few moments.

"Prowl is a vital element of the Autobot armed forces. As his commander, I would need to know any such information."

Ratchet hesitated, his scowl and over-bright optics still conflicted. Then he looked up at Prime, his blank expression hinting at the private communication he had initiated.

It was frustrating, but hardly a surprise for Sideswipe to find himself excluded. Propped up on his elbows, he watched Prime's face, and heard the stutter in Optimus's engine. It was a long few sparkbeats before the Prime nodded once. He rebooted his vocaliser with an audible click.

"I will redouble the search effort."

Ratchet didn't answer. He just watched as Optimus Prime turned and walked out of medbay.

"Ah, Ratch…?" Sideswipe was far from sure whether speaking up at this point was common sense, or literally taking his spark into his own hands. Ratchet spun towards him, his expression unguarded for one long, emotional moment. Sides had been in Ratchet's care more often than he could remember, and knocking on the door of the Matrix more than once. He'd rarely seen the medic so openly relieved to meet his optics.

Ratchet still didn't speak. He came towards Sideswipe in silence, and the warrior cowered a little despite himself. He was pretty sure he hadn't done anything to merit a full-on attack, but with Ratch, it was always a little hard to be sure.

Sideswipe was just about ready to roll off the bed and run for it when Ratchet reached forward, gripped the big warrior's shoulders, and pulled him into a rough embrace.

For a moment, a stunned Sideswipe was rigid and stiff in the circle of Ratchet's arms. Then he relaxed a little, one servo coming up to pat ineffectually at the medic's armoured back.

Ratchet released him – dropped him really. Sideswipe's helm thudded into the berth, and by the time his optics rebooted and cleared, a wrench had appeared in Ratchet's servos, and a scowl on his face.

The return to familiar territory was oddly comforting.

"Sit still," Ratchet snarled. The medic ran a tingling scan over Sideswipe's red plating, and grunted something that sounded vaguely satisfied. He waved a brisk hand towards the warrior's twin.

"Sunstreaker will be alright. He'll be awake soon – no thanks to his fragging stupid habit of wondering off like that." Ratchet's servos came around clipping the back of Sideswipe's helm with a half-hearted blow. "And we _will_ be talking about that. Believe me."

Sideswipe nodded, still trying to unjam his vocaliser after his surprise. The shadow of whatever the Pit his brother had been through still niggled at him, but Ratchet's assurance lifted the worst of his concerns. At least on that front.

"Prowl's here?"

"You think he'd stay away when you yelled for him loud enough to be heard in the Pit?"

"I did?" Sideswipe blinked, his optics cycling. He tried to retrieve a call-shaped memory from the haze of the last few days, but if one existed, it was going to take a serious amount of defragging to figure it out. Certainly more than a disoriented front-liner had time for right now.

Ratchet was looking at him again, wrench still in hand but with that slightly dazed expression back in his optics – as if he couldn't believe he was seeing Sideswipe alive.

"Ratchet…" Sideswipe shook his helm, trying to figure out the right question to ask. He threw up his servos, abandoning the effort. "What the frag is going on?"


	15. Part Fourteen

"This makes, what, eight times we've pulled your afts out of the fire now?"

Bobby Epps' tone was deliberately boastful. Swinging his legs over the edge of the berth, leaning forward so the human was bathed in the glow from his blue optics, Sideswipe rose to the bait.

"In what universe?" he huffed, letting the breeze from his vents ruffle the soldier's uniform. "I think your processor has melted."

A rumble from Ratchet was sufficient warning. Sideswipe lifted his legs back onto the berth, settling back against his pillow before he tested the medic's already over-stretched patience. Epps, and Lennox sitting beside him on the edge of the next berth, glanced at Ratchet too, their playful banter momentarily stilled.

It was Sunstreaker who eased the tension.

"I don't believe this." Sunny's optics were dim. His vocaliser crackled a little, although Sideswipe was far from sure the humans would notice. Sunny managed a good impression of his usual sarcastic drawl as he caught his brother's optics. "This fleshling is including _war games_."

"Hey," Epps raised his hands in protest. "Those are serious training missions."

Sunstreaker snorted, shaking his helm. Sides tried not to worry that his twin's optics flickered, and that the yellow warrior swayed as his balance sensors failed to adjust to the movement.

Lennox was shaking his head, oblivious. "Well we're going to have at least a few more refresher sessions now." He smirked, glancing sidelong at Sunstreaker. "Letting yourself be caught by _humans_? Really, Sunny?"

"Let's see how they come out next time!" Sunstreaker's scowl was not in the least feigned. The strength behind it was false in its entirety. Sunny's swaying was becoming more pronounced, stubborn pride and a grip strong enough to leave dents on the edge of the metal berth the only things keeping him upright.

Sideswipe glanced at Ratchet. He hardly had to. The medic was already moving forward, wrench in hand.

"Visiting hours are over." His optics flicked from Sunstreaker to Lennox with a frown. "Don't you have something you should be doing?"

The banter and forced nonchalance in the air thickened and became sour. Lennox and Epps had taken barely ten minutes out from the on-going search to visit the recovering twins. It had been a few minutes to unwind, to take the victory they'd earned before returning to a struggle they still barely understood.

Sideswipe knew Ratchet knew that, and knew that the worried medic didn't care. Given the waves of exhaustion spilling through his spark from his unsteady twin, Sideswipe wasn't going to push the point either. He nodded an acknowledgement – soldier to soldier - as his human friends climbed onto Ratchet's offered palm for a lift back to floor level.

"Thanks." It was all he said, all he would say about all that had happened, and Sunstreaker backed it up with a nod.

Epps tapped his brow in a silent salute. Lennox gave a nod of his own, his expression wry.

"Just don't expect me to say 'any time'!"

The human clambered down to the ground, pausing to look up. He dropped his voice, talking to the medic rather than his patients.

"We're doing our best."

Ratchet vented a heavy sigh. "I know."

The door was still closing behind them when Sunstreaker dropped back to his berth, his pride and pretence only stretching so far. The yellow clad warrior's optics dimmed, his systems straining in a harsh contrast to his usual fine-tuned purr. Sideswipe could feel his brother's frustration, and the ripple of embarrassment that lay under it. He could feel the concern too.

Sunstreaker's optics flickered, faint but alert, frowning up at the medic checking on him.

"They won't find him."

Ratchet huffed a sigh through his vents. It had been almost three hours since Sideswipe woke to hear his argument with Prime, and an hour before that – as far as Sides could work out – when Prowl's absence was noted. It wasn't long, in the normal course of things, but they all knew these weren't usual circumstances.

"You just lie back and power down." Ratchet shot a glare across at Sideswipe including him in that instruction. "You both need recharge, while I figure out how the frag I'm going to get you retuned with this primitive equipment. Let Prime worry about our slagging tactician." Ratchet frowned, his servos drumming across the plating of his folded arms. "Which, for Primus' sake, is what you _should_ have done in the first place."

Sunstreaker didn't have the energy to argue, and Sideswipe didn't have the will. They'd at least half thought the same, right from the start. The other half though…

"_They won't find him."_ Sunstreaker waited until Ratchet retreated to his office, data pad in hand, before broadcasting the thought for his brother's audios only. "_Not a chance. Not 'til he's ready._"

Sideswipe lay with his servos folded behind his helm, the glow of his optics lighting the ceiling. A restless energy was building inside him. Truthfully he felt pretty good. He was fairly sure that if he'd been the only one injured, Ratchet would have kicked him out already. It was Sideswipe's need to be close to his damaged twin that kept him from doing so, and kept Sides himself from making a bid for escape. And that was a problem.

"_You think you know how Prowl thinks better than Prime?"_

"_No… Yes… Well, maybe." _Sideswipe's thought was probably not even that coherent. Sunstreaker didn't need words from him. The red twin let his ideas seep between the bond between them, letting Sunny see the quiet, dimly lit room that kept returning to his thoughts.

"_First place Prime'll have looked._" Sunstreaker vented hard, unimpressed.

Sideswipe shrugged glancing sidelong at his brother. _"That's kind of the point."_

"_You're sure._" Sunstreaker's voice echoed through their sparkbond, putting words to his brother's thoughts. Sideswipe glanced at him, torn, uncertain. The light had faded from Sunstreaker's optics as his systems worked to rebuild their power reserves. Now they flickered back to life for just long enough to reinforce his blunt command: "_Go._"

* * *

The underground chamber was dark and cool.

The air here was still, untroubled by breezes or the forceful ex-vents of native organisms.

It was clean too, the pollutants and organic detritus of Earth's atmosphere filtered out before entering this entirely Cybertronian space.

Calm, peaceful, it was utterly divorced from the rapid pulse of organic heartbeats that drove the world above. No human map showed this place. The soldiers of NEST must suspect it existed, somewhere close to base, if not actually within its boundaries, but if so they respected the Autobots' silence.

There had been many such crypts, many mausoleums built in the course of their long war. They littered the Universe and each stood like a silent accusation, a memorial to a species set on its own destruction.

And now it was Jazz's frame that lay still and cold within, like so many others across the long years.

An intricate casket surrounded him but didn't hide the reality that lay within, the dull metal of his sparkless form glimpsed through geometric piercings and fretwork. Glyphs covered the surface in elegant patterns, giving Jazz's full designation, his rank, his history and tale after tale of heroism and valour.

The soft illumination of blue optics picked out the details, individual glyphs seeming to glow from within as they caught the light.

Brave. Humorous. Loving. Strong.

Sideswipe's engine faltered, his vents stuttering as he stepped into the room. As Optimus Prime had, a few hours before, he stepped forward, laying a hand on the metal lid above Jazz's chest-plates and bowing his helm in silent contemplation. He stepped back, head still bowed, and only then looked around the dimly lit chamber.

At this point, Optimus had sighed, glancing back at Jazz's empty frame with a grieved expression before leaving him in peace. Sideswipe hummed, expression thoughtful. His finger servos drummed against plating that still carried a shine Ratchet had worked long and hard to achieve.

His legs folding under him, the warrior dropped to sit by the side of the casket. It might have been a sign of exhaustion, the physical strain of recent days catching up with him. The hint of smug certainty on the front-liner's faceplates suggested otherwise.

The first hour passed slowly. The second was well advanced before a second pair of optics lit in the darkness, and another armoured form settled to the ground beside the first.

Sideswipe nodded, his deep voice a little gruff.

"Thought so."

Prowl inclined his helm, his optics still focussing as they adjusted to the shift from ultraviolet to visible light.

"I am impressed by your perseverance."

Sideswipe glanced at him sidelong. "And surprised?" he challenged.

"No. I know you better than that."

Sideswipe nodded, accepting the truth of Prowl's statement. There was no need for greetings, for thank yous or other words – of joy or surprise or anger. Those went unsaid. Once they'd just been commander and commanded, confidences between them as unwanted as they were inappropriate. That was a long time ago, even by the standards of Primus's children.

The vorns of banter, of jokes and punishment, of socialising under Jazz's forceful guidance, of battle orders given and executed… the vorns of shared survival… they made all the difference.

They might not be friends, not precisely, but neither questioned that they were close.

If Sideswipe felt the tickle of Prowl's sensors, assessing his health in silent concern, he didn't mention it. Prowl was equally stoic when the front-liner's far less sensitive scanner array returned the favour. Sideswipe scowled a little, gazing into nowhere, and then shook his helm.

"I figured you'd be doing the same thing Jazz taught me about pranking – don't be in the last place they look. Be in the first. Just don't get caught." Sideswipe settled himself, his arms supporting his back as his legs stretched out in front of him. "Got to admit, I'm still kinda puzzled over why."

The question was a fair one. It deserved an honest answer.

"I needed to think."

Sideswipe gave him a sidelong look, optics wide and disbelieving. "And for that you risked the wrath of Ratchet and turned half the base upside down?"

"It's been a long war."

Prowl's observation fell into silence. His door-wings hung heavy behind his back, his optics locked on the casket that held his bondmate's frame. He shook a little, merely being this close to the reality of his loss painful.

Sideswipe let the silence stretch out, thinking about it. It wasn't like he didn't know that. The humans they worked with would hardly comprehend how long it had been since Prowl and Sideswipe had even seen one another, let alone since this whole mess started.

"We've all come a long way," he offered eventually.

"Not far enough." That was firm, harsh, almost angry. "We fight our way across the universe. We fight on Earth. And even when all is lost, all is gone, we fight on."

"And you're wondering why?"

"The AllSpark is destroyed. Our cities lie in ruins. Those we love have returned to the Matrix. What is there left to fight for?"

Sideswipe's vocaliser hummed, his servos clenching and unclenching with disquiet.

"Megatron's still out there. Decepticons…"

Prowl's sidelong glance was unimpressed, his door-wings flaring in disgust.

"So we're going to fight to the last mech? Go on until Optimus and Megatron take one another's sparks, standing atop a pile of our broken frames?"

"If that's what it takes." Sideswipe stood, his optics bright. "'Cause, Prowl. It's not about us any more. Okay, so the AllSpark's gone, and yeah, maybe we're the last. We've lost our chance." Air huffed from his vents, condensing in the cool chamber. "Can't imagine the rest of the Universe is going to grieve all that hard to see us gone. But you know fragging well that if we hadn't stood up when we needed to, that universe would be a fragging different place. Maybe we're not going to have a generation of new sparks running around the place, but we've got the humans, and… and how many others? Slag, I can't even remember all of them. Do you reckon Megatron would have left any of those poor fraggers in peace, if we hadn't been there to protect them? Do you reckon the humans would survive even half a vorn if we all lay down now and gave up and took a quick trip back to the Matrix?"

The warrior paced, his expression unusually serious.

"Look, Prowl, I don't know what's going on in your processor." He raised a hand, giving the plating over his spark an unconscious rub for comfort. "I… I don't want to imagine what's going on in your spark. I can see you've got Ratch pretty freaked, even if he's not talking."

The front-liner paused, letting the silent question hang in the air for several seconds, unanswered, before shaking his helm and going on, his voice rising with every sentence. "Whatever the frag is going on with you, I reckon Ratchet can probably keep you alive if you let him. If you walk away from that chance… well, that's your choice, and I can't second guess it any more than Optimus can. But don't you dare tell me that it's not worth going on. Don't you dare say that we've lost so much, so many, and it wasn't worth it! Don't you fragging _dare_ tell me Jazz and the others died for nothing!"

Prowl swayed back from the irate warrior, his expression weary and pained.

"And does Sunstreaker agree?"

Sideswipe came up short, his optics cycling in surprise. "What?"

"I saw his art. I saw him searching for meaning, struggling to capture life and movement and purpose because he'd lost his own."

Sideswipe rocked on his pedes. The warrior became quiet, his attention turned inwards and in to the bond he shared with his twin. His systems sounded harsh to Prowl's trained audials, still not fully recovered from his ordeal, even if the twin was clearly more than functional. The warrior sank back to sit against the wall. His expression was stricken, anxious, his questions for Sunstreaker searching. The conversation took time, the ups and downs of it playing out on the warrior's expressive faceplates.

When Sideswipe spoke again, it was with the echo of his twin in his voice.

"Okay. Right. You're right. Searching, yeah, and finding." He shook his helm. "Look around you, Prowler. Not in here, but out there – life teems on this planet. Life teems through the whole slagging Universe. Sunny was seeing it even if I'm too dense to see a pulsar when it's in front of me." Sideswipe paused, scowling. "Yeah, thanks Sunshine." He shook his helm, refocusing on the quiet tactician in front of him with a scowl equally intense. "So even if we don't leave new sparks to take our place, don't tell us we've not left a legacy. Each day our sparks keep burning, we're saving lives. Okay we're kinda fragged off with a human or two at the moment, but even Sunny knows better than to blame the whole slagging race." Sideswipe's passion ebbed. He glanced sidelong at his commander. "And then there's you."

Prowl shook his helm automatically, caught up in Sideswipe's intensity despite himself. "I find it hard to believe my circumstances could play a role in anyone's search for meaning."

Sideswipe nodded, his grin a little wry. "Yeah, we know. But you came when we needed you. You didn't have to. You knew it would land you in a whole lot of no choices. And you came anyway." Sideswipe shifted when he sat, his shoulder nudging Prowl's seemingly by chance. "We kinda appreciate that."

Prowl paused. He glanced sidelong studying the warrior in the dim light. He looked away, his optics returning to Jazz's casket. Not even that could still the memories playing through his processor.

"I tried to find you, when Cybertron fell. I would have taken you both in my search party, if I could. I wondered for many vorns what became of you."

Sideswipe's optics brightened, his expression betraying his surprise for a long moment. He shook his helm. "Slag happened. No one was thinking straight in that whole mess. But we got out. And we got here. And there are mechs here we kinda care about. And there are humans to protect. Millions of them. So we keep going, and some of them learn about some of us, and one day there's gonna be a whole new people heading out among the stars. And, just maybe, they'll be taking a little bit of us with them."

"Even if we're not here to see it?"

"Prime's not going anywhere." Sideswipe settled back more comfortably, his brow-ridge raised as he studied the mech in front of him. "And, I guess, if you are then you'd better be planning on having a couple of travel-mates."

Prowl frowned at the front-liner, his expression startled. He knew how close the twins were to Ratchet, and how devoted they were to Optimus Prime. The idea that they might leave both behind had simply never occurred to him. "Sunstreaker needs care and recuperation."

"For now." The mech's cynical chuckle was a reminder – if Prowl needed one – that he was no longer a youngling, and that he and his brother were forces to be reckoned with. "You really think you can get enough of a head start to keep ahead of us?"

"The two of you have specialised medical requirements and are sufficiently well known to represent high priority Decepticon targets. It would be illogical to take a separate path from Ratchet now that you have reunited from him. It would place your sparks at unacceptable risk."

This time Sideswipe's laugh held a note of genuine humour that almost hid a growing weariness "Did you actually listen to what you just said?" He held up an arm, angling it in the light of their optics. "The way Ratch has me shined up I can be your mirror if you need one."

Prowl's mouth opened. Closed. He shook his helm, trying to parse the suggestion.

"I'm sparked." Prowl couldn't have explained why he told them, let alone why then and with so little warning. Maybe it was the reminder of their mutual need for Ratchet's care. Maybe he just needed to hear it said aloud. "I am carrying Jazz's infant."

He stood, his door-wings unfolding and flaring behind him. Moving around the stunned Sideswipe, he lay first his hand and then his helm on the cool metal of Jazz's casket.

"My bondmate is not here. Our child will never know his father, even if I can bring him to term." His door-wings fluttered against his back, his faceplates twisting. "Most likely, my sparkling will die before he even becomes aware, his passing long and drawn out and marred by my pain. Even if he survives, what then? Will he be the last? The lone Cybertronian wandering the Universe like the ghost of a lost people? Wouldn't it be kinder to give up the fight now? To let us both pass in peace?"

It was the first time he'd articulated the thought, even to himself. It horrified him, static choking his vocaliser as the words escaped. Giving up had never been in his vocabulary, or Jazz's. Allowing a sparkling to die would have been unthinkable to them both, least of all one of the rare infants born of a spark-bond. To do both at once…

He wouldn't have blamed Sideswipe for walking away from him. Instead, he flinched, startled by the warrior's touch on his shoulder.

Sideswipe's expression was drawn, pained. There was horror in his expression, true, but also something Prowl hadn't expected to see: joy.

"You're carrying a sparkling?" Sideswipe reset his vocaliser on the last word. "Truly?" He shook his helm, and a low chuckle escaped him, gladness swelling in his expression. "You and Jazz? That's going to be one awesomely unpredictable infant."

Prowl frowned, rubbing his chest-plates, taken aback by Sideswipe's reaction.

"It will be years before I am strong enough to nurture this sparkling to term, maybe vorns."

Sideswipe rolled his optics, his tone deliberately nonchalant. "So you've got him in stasis right? It's not like he's in any hurry."

"I may well not survive long enough. If my spark extinguishes before the sparklet becomes independent…"

"Like Ratch'll let that happen." Sideswipe shook his helm, his confidence growing in synchrony with Prowl's own confused irritation. The warrior took a step forward, the humour fading from his expression, the sincerity clear. "Listen, Prowl, how many mechs spark in their lifetime? One in a million, one in ten million? You know what the chances were against it, better than anyone. Second guessing why isn't going to help. Slag the why. The only thing that matters is the what. Primus has given you, and the whole slagging lot of us a miracle. And, yes, it's going to be hard, and yeah, you're going to need a slag load of help." He leaned forward, the grip on his Prowl's shoulder tightening. "But, bottom line, Prowl, you know damn well there's not a chance in the Pit you're going to let that gift go to waste."

It was true.

The realisation might have been a hard one. The hesitation he'd shown on the edge of the system and the long hours he'd spent here, contemplating their fate trying to decide whether he could endure staying on this world, had been for nothing. The months of internal debate, of fearing that Prime and Ratchet would take the decision out of his servos when he reached them, had been little more than a mental exercise.

He'd found Earth and made the descent. He'd rejoined his friends, his colleagues and his Prime. He had sought out his medic's aid, and conserved his systems to the best of his ability. He'd done all that and never realised his actions were pre-ordained.

For all his soul-searching, the decision had never been his to make. It had been taken from him almost two years before when his bondmate cried out to their maker, and Primus heard his prayer. The twin's ordeal, coming precisely when Prowl most needed a push to follow his only course, was nothing more than a gentle reminder of that fact.

He straightened, standing in front of his mate's tomb. A weight might have been taken from his shoulders. He still worried for his infant, struggling to visualise a future for the child. He still feared his own weakness. But now the burden of choice had been lifted from him, replaced by faith that the product of his love and Jazz's would be watched over and cared for, whatever came.

Slowly, he reached out. Transforming a digit into a sharp claw, he pressed it into the soft metal of Jazz's casket. The accent he added was a subtle thing, barely visible, but it was enough to transform the common glyph for 'deeply loved' into the far rarer and far more intimate "bondmate". Their bond had never been acknowledged in life. In death, it had left an unmistakeable legacy. Flattening the claw, he laid his servo on the tomb, seeking strength.

"I'm not sure I can do this," he whispered the words, his other servo hovering protectively over his chest-plates. "But I have to try."

"Yup." Sideswipe stood close beside him, close enough to offer comfort with his strong field. "And you can do it if anyone can. We're pretty slagging certain of that."

He reached out, gripping his commander's shoulder in support. There was silence for a moment. Then the red-clad warrior winced, rubbing the side of his helm, as if compensating for aching audials.

"Ah… well, if we've got that settled, and while we're on the topic of things only you can do… Sunny says Ratchet's not exactly impressed with either us right now, and believe me, I'm paraphrasing there. I don't know how the slag we're gonna talk our way out of this. Any chance you could think of a way…?"

Prowl's door-wings hitched higher. He reached behind him, running his fingertips along the top of Jazz's tomb, both in farewell and promise.

"I'll do my best," he agreed.

* * *

"I don't believe this." Lennox rubbed his brow wearily, his words flat. "We find Sunny, and lose Prowl _and_ Sides?" He scowled. "Did someone install a side door in medbay and just not bother telling us?"

His sarcastic tone did not go over well. The whine of Ratchet's saw blade left no one in any illusions about how he felt about it. The medic stood on the threshold of medbay, its door handle grasped firmly in his servos. Sunstreaker was still recovering, not up to expeditions of his own, but if he so much as thought about absconding too, he would find Ratchet ready for him.

In fact the whole base was on high alert. Given that the same had been true before Sideswipe's escape, and for the full two hours since, without sight of their wayward mechs, that was hardly a comfort

Optimus Prime rumbled, his clenched fists betraying an unusual degree of tension. He'd called for his core unit to join him at the command gantry for a review of the current search. Ratchet had told him exactly how he felt about being ordered away from his one remaining patient. The alcove just outside medbay was a compromise and not a good one. Ironhide had remained at the gantry, monitoring each report as it came in. It still felt crowded with Optimus, Bumblebee and Ratchet squeezed into the confined space, not to mention Lennox and Epps at ankle height, hyperaware of the Autobots' too-close pede-falls.

The deep throb of Prime's engine rumbled a counterpoint to Ratchet's saw. "Sunstreaker is still claiming not to know of his twin's actions?"

Ratchet snorted. "What do you think?"

Epps' brow creased. He ran a hand back over his smooth scalp. "That's a good thing right? I mean Sunny wouldn't keep quiet if Sides was in deep slag?"

Bumblebee warbled an amused sound. "Not unless he thought Sideswipe deserved it."

The humour fell flat. Optimus Prime vented deeply, the wash of air warm against the humans' skin.

"Sunstreaker's contentment is indeed a source of comfort. However, given the situation, I will remained concerned until both Sideswipe and Prowl are once more under Ratchet's care."

There was no arguing with that. Lennox nodded. "Okay, recap: we're pretty sure they didn't drive off base – they're probably still pretty close. So let's start from the beginning – how the frag did they get out of medbay without being seen?"

"Ah…?" Bumblebee might be young but he was part of the core command group – one of the few who had been with Prime throughout. He was also one of the very few mechs to have much training from Jazz – less thorough than Prowl's, of course, but rather more formal than Sideswipe's mid-prank tuition and collection of hints and tips.

The scout was pretty irrepressible most of the time. Even so, Lennox hadn't expected him to speak up so soon after the silent rebukes for his weak joke. 'Bee shifted, his winglets flaring uneasily. "About that side door…"

"You're kidding!"

Bumblebee's winglets wilted, his vocaliser choking into an inarticulate warble as the sharp optics of both superiors skewered him and Epps' cry of disgust rang off the metal walls. He reset his vocaliser with an audible click, standing his ground.

"Well, not exactly… But I can think of a couple of ways Jazz could get in there… or out, and Prowl and Sides're both pretty good at stealth ops."

"Show me." Ratchet reached out, grabbing Bumblebee's arm with a grip that wasn't going to loosen before his medbay was secure. The medic palmed open the door with his free servo, using his hip to bump it wider. Prime moved to reach past him, holding the heavy steel door so Ratchet could manoeuvre their scout into the room.

Ratchet and 'Bee took two steps into medbay and stopped. Close behind them, Prime stopped too, a startled murmur escaping him. Lennox and Epps exchanged a look, taking on the constantly moving obstacle course of Cybertronian pedes as they darted past.

Sunstreaker had gone nowhere, the monitors above his berth glowing in soft amber and green as the mech recharged.

Sideswipe lay on the same berth, curled against his brother, red plating vibrant against yellow. And on the far side of the room, against a wall where he felt more secure, Prowl lay on his side, recharging as deeply and with the same perfect innocence as the twins.

Bumblebee staggered, unbalanced as Ratchet's hold on his arm was abruptly released. The medic spared the twins no more than a glance, his focus almost entirely on the taller, door-winged mech beyond them.

He scanned Prowl closely, both with his internal sensors and studying the readouts above the berth. Reaching out, he snagged an energon drip and connected it, unsurprised when the tactician's optics lit and he squirmed with a soft murmur of discontent.

Ratchet's servos moved quickly, the medic in no mood to spare concentration on his berth-side manner. It was a few seconds before his shoulders slumped, releasing their pent up nervous energy. His scowl deepened.

"Where the _slag_ have you been?"

Prowl's optics cycled slowly, lazily. He frowned a little, his door-wings trembling against the berth.

"Ratchet? I have no idea what you mean."

Lennox sucked in a gasp. Of all the answers he'd expected that was a long way from top of the list. Ratchet stared at his patient, for once rendered speechless. His grip on the wrench he held tightened. His vents caught, and stuttered.

"_You have no idea what I mean?!_" Ratchet's tone would scorch paint at a hundred yards. Prowl's optics cycled through a blink of perfect innocence. Ratchet's frame straightened, the medic pulling himself up to his full height, his vocalisor whirring with pent-up energy.

Just inside the room, Prime unfroze, striding forward to his lieutenant's side. Ratchet deflated, his momentum checked as Optimus Prime brushed past to stand between him and the supine tactician.

"And if I asked you for an honest answer, Prowl?"

Prowl tilted his helm, optics meeting his Prime's. "Then I would be dismayed that you chose to question my first response."

Whatever passed between them in that look, Lennox couldn't follow it. It seemed to last an eternity, and to carry the weight of worlds. The tension built, Prowl's blatant lie trembling in the face of his Prime's scrutiny. Lennox wasn't sure who was more surprised – him or Ratchet – when it was Prime who broke the tableau. Optimus Prime vented a small sigh and then just nodded.

"Then I shall not ask."

"Optimus!" Ratchet's protest was silenced as he too met his Prime's optics for a long moment. His reaction was far less calm than Prowl's.

The medic threw up his hands, his mutters subsiding into harsh sounding Cybertronian as he crossed the room to subject Sideswipe and his brother to set of scans of their own.

Prime nodded to Bumblebee, waving him back. "Please inform Ironhide of this development. No further action will be necessary."

Amongst the humans of NEST, there would be arguments, recriminations, debriefing and discipline. Even with Prowl, Lennox could insist on it – the terms of their treaty allowing for enforcement of rules across species boundaries. He didn't have to talk to his co-commander to realise Optimus Prime's way was better. Yes, there would be discussions, as appropriate and when time allowed. Ultimately though, Lennox trusted, like so many others, in the compassion and understanding of the mighty Prime.

He nodded, but waved Epps back with 'Bee nonetheless. Prime might think this mess was over, but Lennox was well aware of how much disruption the search had caused, and how much would need fixing. The major himself stayed, taking the moment to enjoy the sight of all three of their errant bots safe and secure. He was the only one close enough to hear Prime's low murmur.

"Prowl, are you alright?"

Prowl shifted, the flutter of his door-wings betraying his discomfort as the energon supply pulled slightly. He shook his helm.

"No, Optimus, I'm not." The mech gave his Prime a faint smile, his optics dim. "But, with your support, I will endeavour to be."

A tension drained from Prime's frame, his relief apparent. Prowl nodded an acknowledgement that the emotion was somewhat justified.

"It may be some time before Ratchet releases me to fully resume my duties."

"I will wait." There was no hesitation in Prime's assertion. If anything, his tone actually verged on playful as he went on. "Just be aware that I require my medical officer too. While I recognise the temptation to drive Ratchet out of his processor while confined in his presence, your restraint would be welcomed."

"I shall take that under consideration." Lennox had seen a Cybertronian smirk just once – on Jazz's faceplates after taking down a Decepticon marauder. He saw the faint shadow of it now on Prowl's. "No promises."

Prime smirked back. He squeezed his second's shoulder with a careful pressure, and treated a half-awake Sideswipe to the same treatment on his way from the room. Shaking his head, baffled anew by both the similarities and the differences between their races, Lennox followed.


	16. Part Fifteen

**One Month Later…**

"What the frag?"

His partitioned office space might not be Lennox's favourite place on base, but it was at least his. When he headed in here – when he couldn't avoid it – he at least had the consolation of knowing the endless drifts of paperwork would be where he'd left them. It might not be much, but in the fast moving and never predictable world of NEST there was a certain comfort in that fact.

Now the familiar pillars of paper, stacked high enough that he had only the vaguest idea of what lay at the bottom, had gone. His desk's scratched, chipboard surface was visible for the first time in months. What paperwork remained had been sorted into folders, stacked neatly in one corner of the space, and both labelled and colour-coded. Even his ever-growing collection of chewed pencils and half-used biros – some buried in the accumulating drifts for well over a year now – had been recovered, sorted, and propped up in a couple of coffee mugs: one for blue and black, one for the rest.

Stunned, Lennox reached out blindly to snag his office chair, and dropped into it without looking. His instinctive reactions took over before the yelp even left his mouth. He leapt back to his feet, his own cry melding with an electronic squeal. The sounds merged into a high-pitched whine of electric motors, as a foot-tall, remote-control monster truck motored off the chair, bounced once on its wheels as it landed on the floor, and headed for the relative safety of the far wall.

Rubbing his posterior, still throbbing from sitting on the irregular shape, Lennox stared down at it.

"Wheelie?"

The tiny ex-Decepticon transformed, rubbing his own helm as if to remind Lennox he hadn't been the only one to get an uncomfortable surprise.

"When will you people learn to look out for the little guys?" The dimunitive bot's accented tone was caught, as always, halfway between accusation and whining apology. "I mean, hey, you wouldn't be, like, singing with glee if Optimus Prime sat on _you_, would you?"

Lennox blinked at him, trying to banish the mental image, and then letting his eyes sweep across his unnaturally tidy desk before returning to the young mech.

"Wheelie, what the _frag_ are you doing here?"

"Prowl borrowed me." Wheelie shrugged one mechanical shoulder, ignoring Lennox's baffled look as he nodded in righteous indignation. "Talk about unfair, right? I mean, there I am minding my own business, keeping an eye on the squishy and the barkers, and then Jolt comes roaring up and says Prowl wants to see me. Thought it was gonna be somethin' excitin', not more housework." The small mech whistled, rolling backwards and forwards a little on his wheel-pedes. "Like I was gonna say no though? I mean I'd be talking guard duty for the next millennium. Besides, the mech has a serious rep, if y'know what I mean."

Lennox sank once more into his seat, taking care to look this time before doing so. He rubbed his brow, wondering when the day was going to start making sense.

The month since Prime's quiet, thoughtful second in command joined their command meetings had been… interesting. Patrols had been rearranged on almost a daily basis, training exercises had become more varied and unpredictable. And NEST's expenditure, wastage and overall stress levels had all dropped almost twenty percent for no apparent effort on the part of its commanders.

Prowl was experimenting, learning the resources he'd have to work with in a battle situation, and slowly bringing millions of years of experience to bear on optimising every aspect of the organisation. Rationally, Lennox knew that and, sure, he was glad that the worryingly fragile Autobot seemed to be recovering. Emotionally, he couldn't help finding the sheer _competence_ of the mech just a bit creepy.

"Major Lennox? Is there a problem?"

Lennox looked up, past the partition walls, into a pair of deep blue optics that he'd swear concealed more than just polite concern. Prowl's door-wings bracketed his helm, the glint of silver-white that seemed to be spreading from their tips reflecting the light as they twitched. The NEST major gave him a look of resignation.

"Really, Prowl? My office?"

"Optimus has commented on your lack of pleasure in administrative tasks. I believe you will find the new arrangement rather more ergonomic and satisfying than the old."

"Look, I appreciate the thought," Lennox rubbed his brow, "But, well, I can't say I have a lot of truck with fancy theories for red tape."

Now the laughter in Prowl's expression was unmistakeable. It might not have reached his faceplates, but his optics were bright, his door-wings spread wide and shivering.

"I would ask you to trust me, Major. After all, I have a great many years experience with a truck who feels much the same."

Prowl took a step back, his helm vanishing from Lennox's line of sight before the human could react. He satisfied himself with exchanging bemused looks with Wheelie instead. The small Autobot's optics were dilated, his wheels shifting and frame stretching as he tried to peer over the partition.

"Whoa," Lennox said softly. "Did _Prowl_ just make a joke?"

Wheelie gave him a slightly panicked look, the ex-Decepticon's awe of his near-legendary Autobot superiors clashing with the input from his audials.

"Me? I di'n't hear nothing!" he said loudly. The little mech sidled towards Lennox, his wary optics still directed upwards as he muttered out of the side of his mouth. "Are you asking for brig-time?"

Lennox chuckled, reaching out with care to pat the sharp plates of the young mech's back.

"I thought he reserved that privilege for twins?"

His question might as well have summoned them. Sunstreaker's querulous voice rose a moment before Sideswipe's equally vehement answer. Lennox didn't wait for the inevitable hum of engines and rumble of movement as an audience gathered. Giving Wheelie another rueful pat, he headed out to investigate.

* * *

Optimus Prime couldn't be sure what the squabble was about. He knew for certain what had caused it.

Sideswipe and Sunstreaker glinted in the sunlight, deep metallic red reflecting from bright yellow gold as the pair got into one another's faces. At least half of their dispute was over their internal comms. Another third seemed to consist entirely of profane insults shared in a variety of exotic languages… The admiring looks those were getting from some of the other Autobots, gathered to enjoy the entertainment, were frankly rather worrying.

Optimus's optics picked out Mudflap and Skids by the door to the main hangar. The pair were watching with dilated optics – the younger twins fresh from their latest spell in the brig and obviously wary of getting caught in another. Prowl emerged from the shadows behind them, his arms folded across his chest-plates and a rare fond look directed at the squabbling elder twins.

Irritable eruptions from Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had become almost a daily occurrence. Neither Prowl nor Optimus Prime was alone in welcoming the return to near-normality almost as much as rueing the chaos.

Thank Primus that this time at least, there were precious few humans around to add to the racket. Major Lennox had followed Prowl out of the hangar and a few others loitered suspiciously nearby, sidelong glances betraying their curiosity. The rest of NEST's personnel were otherwise engaged – either training, on patrol or in support roles occupying their full attention.

As it was not occupying the twins'.

"_You do realise that this will continue until they are cleared for duty?" _Prowl's half-frustrated, half-amused observation carried across the officers' comm-band. _"Their life experiences have not left them temperamentally well-equipped for confinement."_

"_Slag experience." _Ironhide's contribution was more frustrated, less amused. The weapons mech scowled across from the firing range, his cannons rotating. _"Those mechs were sparked with cabin fever."_

Optimus nodded in agreement with his officers. He raised a brow-ridge, glancing at the stubborn scowl on Ratchet's face-plates. The medic's chagrin was obvious. His buzzsaw blade whirred, his irritation clear in the set of his broad shoulders. There was no hint of uncertainty in his voice.

"_No. I am not clearing them for duty."_

"_I understood from your reports that their physical injuries had been remedied."_

"_If you think that means I'm going to let you throw them into battle…!" _

"_Just lettin' them off base would be a start, Ratch."_

"'_Cause it's not like they could get themselves into a slag load of trouble amongst humans, right?"_

Optimus couldn't quite hide his wince. Ratchet's tone was caustic enough to sting his plating. Ironhide's must be peeling and even Prowl's door-wings were noticeably lower than they had been before he spoke.

Then Sideswipe's fist drew back, fury and frustration overtaking reason in his expression. Sunstreaker sneered, unimpressed, folding his arms – almost as if inviting the blow that would turn this from argument to flat-out fistfight.

Prime took a step forward. Prowl moved faster.

Optimus gasped, not sure if he was more impressed with the speed of his second, the trust Prowl was placing in their front-liners, or the reflexes that allowed Sideswipe to pull his punch, stopping it inches from Prowl's helm.

"Enough." The tactician stood between the twins, his arms still folded across his chest-plate, his voice giving no hint of the danger he'd just placed himself in.

Ratchet and Sunstreaker were less sanguine. Their voices mingled in a single strangled exclamation.

"Are you fragging_ insane?!_"

Sideswipe looked shaken, and Optimus took a moment to calm his own vents. The chances of the warrior actually striking their second had probably never been high, but of all the mechs on base only Optimus, Ratchet and the twins actually knew what the stakes of that gamble were. Prowl was stronger now – far stronger than he had been on arrival – but his condition was still serious, the balance on his systems precarious, and the sparkling safely held in stasis until he had a chance of carrying to term. Optimus had already known his friend would not allow his condition to excuse any shirking of his duties. It was sobering to be reminded of just how seriously Prowl took that commitment.

The tactician glared from left to right, his chiding expression not sparing either twin. If the other Autobots had noticed the strain in the air, the open frown on their second in command's face-plates was enough to banish it from thought.

"Enough," Prowl repeated firmly. He shook his helm. "I know you are adults and warriors, so I will _not_ tolerate you behaving like undisciplined younglings – whatever the circumstances."

Sideswipe gave him a sour look, the front-liner bouncing back from his shock.

"You're going to brig us? Again?"

"I have no intention of listening to more complaints about you wearing the concrete flooring to dust."

"Then give us something to do!" The words burst out of Sunstreaker in a sudden torrent. He glanced at his brother, shaking his helm. "Slag it, Prowl, sitting around like this is driving us fragging nuts!"

"Slag, yeah. We should've been back on duty weeks ago."

There was a scornful huff from Ratchet. Sideswipe shot him a scowl before turning back to Prowl and adding a pleading look directed at Prime for good measure.

"Just give us _something_. Please."

Prowl tapped his foot, glancing down at the lines marked beneath his pedes before looking up at the twins, his optics thoughtful as he studied the pair. He turned a look of open assessment on Ratchet, humming through an ex-vent, before nodding.

"I believe you were playing 'basketball' when Sunstreaker was assaulted. I have yet to see this game played."

The twins stared. Optimus didn't so much as twitch, but it took an effort not to react. Not for the first time, he wondered just what in Primus' name was going through his tactician's processor.

Even Ratchet cycled his optics. "You're not fragging serious."

"I am perfectly serious. I wish to see the game in action. Sunstreaker and Sideswipe wish to have their time occupied. The two aims are complementary. I fail to see the reason for such scepticism."

"The humans're all out on exercises." Sideswipe spoke slowly. He shook himself, uncertain as he tried to figure out where Prowl was going with this. "The rules say mech versus human, so we're kind of stuck."

"I believe Sideswipe habitually plays on one team, with Ironhide and Jolt, while Sunstreaker plays on a second with Ratchet and Mudflap, correct?" Prowl looked around him. "Then it would seem we have two complete teams available, and the rule in question can be held in abeyance on this occasion."

"He's kind of hard to argue with when he gets into this mood, isn't he?"

Optimus looked down. Lennox was leaning against his ankle, watching in some bemusement. He hadn't raised his voice to speak, and Optimus kept his own to a low rumble as he watched the hasty preparations unfold.

"Most of us have learnt not to make the attempt."

Ironhide nodded as he strode over from the target range, his expression combining wary curiosity with anticipation.

"Up for this, Ratch?"

The medic shrugged, giving in to the inevitable. His wrist-saw rotated idly, his face-plates mirroring the weapons-mech's. "You're on.

* * *

It was a… curious… game. Prowl watched with a mixture of bemusement and amusement, his helm tilted to one side. The inflated bladder that served as a game token was delicate in the extreme, vulnerable both to piercing by sharp-clawed servos and to crushing between them. It was even possible to burst the spheroid simply by bounding it too hard against the rough concrete pan on which the court was marked out.

That concrete presented another challenge. At least twice, a mech concentrating on the 'ball' had slid out of play on the thick layer of wind-laid dust underfoot. Another time, Jolt had been virtually thrown across the line in a full contact encounter that Optimus had quickly ruled illegal.

Perhaps the claustrophobic playing area was less crowded with five humans rather than three mechs on the second team. Prowl rather doubted that it was any simpler for the mechs to manoeuvre in those circumstances. At least with the current arrangement, they were able to pay less attention to where they placed their pedes and more to the strategy of their opponents.

It had taken Prowl moments to access the rules of the game – both internationally-ratified and NEST-modified – from the base network. It took rather longer for him to parse the obscure terminology and unfamiliar objectives in the context of the match unfolding in front of him. Both teams had fouled at least once. Both had managed to preserve the ball and place it in the basket. There seemed to be little to choose between them. While Ironhide's team were winning eight points to five at the present moment, even Prowl's top-flight data analysis algorithms could not predict the final outcome.

For a moment, just a moment, he considered booting the tactical processor mounted in parallel to his own. The moment was long enough for him to reconsider, panic for himself and his infant flaring at the mere thought. His servo came up, its tips resting against his chest plate before he got the reaction under control. With Ratchet, Sunstreaker and Sideswipe all distracted by the movement, Jolt and Ironhide took the opportunity to stretch their lead a little further.

Sunstreaker scowled, frowning at Prowl as if uncertain whether the distraction had been intentional. Prowl forced his servo down, his return look steady and non-committal.

The way the twins were playing was… worrying. Both were skilled; Prowl had anticipated that and was unsurprised to see it confirmed. They handled the inflated spheroid with a delicacy that few would credit to their big frames. They were aware of their teammates, their passes precise, and their reception of thrown balls faultless. There was certainly no hint of physical infirmity, or sign that the exertion was causing them difficulties.

No, what troubled Prowl wasn't the way they handled the ball or passed it. It was the way they consistently, without hesitation or apparent effort, intercepted one another's throws.

Sunstreaker threw the ball, its trajectory perfect for Mudflap as the young twin slid forwards. Sideswipe lived up to his name, his pedes transforming to tyres for a few seconds as he came in at 45 degrees, skirting his twin and rising from nowhere to intercept the quick ball. If the manoeuvre had happened only once, it would have got a drawn vent of admiration. As it was, the only reaction was a confused mutter from the growing audience for the eighth such move in under a breem.

Prowl glanced sideways, unsurprised to see Optimus Prime leaning forward, a hint of a frown on his unmasked faceplates. He didn't have to check with Ironhide and Ratchet to know that they saw it too. The frustration on the field was rising. Increasingly, both senior officers were passing to their third players, bypassing the twins entirely for fear of losing the ball to their opponents.

Sunstreaker and Sideswipe could hardly miss it. The two stopped on opposite sides of the court, their gazes locking for several long seconds as they conversed silently. Ironhide held the ball, watching, as all the others were watching, the unofficial time-out deviating from the strictest interpretation of the rules, but necessary nonetheless.

The twins nodded in unison, their shared look of determination making them more alike than ever. Ironhide passed the ball, and the game was back on.

For a breem or two, perhaps a full twenty minutes, it looked hopeful. The game moved fast, the twins were at its heart, and Sunstreaker's single successful attempt to block his twin brought a satisfied look of triumph to his face rather than the confusion of earlier.

Then the old pattern re-emerged, slowly at first, and then as clear and irrefutable as the start.

"_Prowl_," Optimus's com voice was thoughtful and concerned. "_We are approaching a regulation half-time interval. Do you wish me to declare it?"_

"_No." _Prowl didn't have to think before answering. As an Autobot-only game, the time limitations required by humans needn't apply, not when there was still more to learn. _"Allow us to pause for a few adjustments. Then let the game continue."_

The tactician stepped up to the edge of the court, his door-wings drawing in towards his back and his expression cool.

"Ironhide. I would like to attempt this sport myself. If I may…?"

Ironhide wasn't the only one to glance at Ratchet before agreeing to the proposed substitution. Prowl was still on very light duties, his hours of work strictly limited, and visibly tiring him towards the end of a shift nonetheless. As much as he hated to know his weakness was so apparent, he could hardly deny the fact. Even if he tried, Ratchet's deep frown would have given the lie to his words. It was something of a surprise when the medic gave a sharp, reluctant nod.

"Two breems on court. Then you're out."

Prowl raised a brow-ridge, his door-wings still carefully tucked out of harm's way.

"Then, given your time limit, I would propose an exchange. If you give me Sunstreaker, I will transfer Jolt to your command, and allow the addition of Skids."

That got another murmur. Ratchet's snort spoke eloquently for just what he thought of the swap. Lennox was the one who spoke up though.

"Splitting up twins is the rule, Prowl."

"So I understand. However, with a pair of twins on each team the potential for unfair advantage is nullified. And since Ratchet considers both Sunstreaker and Sideswipe, as well as me, unfit for duty, that disadvantage must logically negate any concerns about the relative experience of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe in comparison to to Mudflap and Skids."

This time Ratchet's scowl had a hard edge that made his previous efforts pale in comparison. His snarl conveyed acceptance only in the technical sense. The medic knew what Prowl was doing. The tactician met his optics and did not apologise.

Prowl took up position in the back third of the court, his chosen role largely defensive as he gestured the elder twins forward in front of him. Ratchet did not opt to mirror him, placing himself in the attack even as he marshalled his newly augmented team. Prowl wasn't surprised when he pinged Sunstreaker's com channel only to have both twins ping back almost before the signal reached them. They were ready for this, and while he would do his part when needed, he'd spent millennia learning how to achieve a maximal result for minimal exertion.

He smiled sadly to himself, pain mingling with memory. Jazz had taught him more about that than most mechs ever knew.

"_Heads up!_" Sunstreaker intercepted the first ball even as Sideswipe dropped back a few steps to brush against his commander with a gesture that seemed entirely accidental. Prowl shook off the memories, and the distraction, with a flick of his tight-folded door-wings. Waving Sideswipe forward, bouncing on the sole of his pedes, Prowl concentrated on the game.

* * *

Two breems, as it turned out, was long enough for Prowl and the twins to increase their lead to more than three hundred percent of their opponents' score. The twins moved with speed and grace. Prowl played with more deliberation, but ensured that he was where he should be when Sunstreaker or Sideswipe needed to pass the ball, and directed their plays throughout.

Even so the exertion took its toll. Prowl was venting hard by the end of the first breem. He ended the second swaying on his pedes, well aware that the twins had started to avoid passing the ball to him entirely. His energy reserves pinged him a firm warning at the same moment that Sideswipe caught one elbow and Ratchet the other. The medic didn't even speak, just pressed a cube of pale liquid into Prowl's servos and gave him a meaningful look.

Prowl took a reasonable sip from the cube and lowered it, His optics had dimmed, static flickering across his vision, but he held Ratchet's gaze nonetheless.

"Do you yield?" he asked softly.

Ratchet swore, his fists clenching. First his vents and then his vocalisor cycled through a calming routine. He gestured for Prowl to drink even as he jerked a nod.

"Fine." The medic glared at the twins hovering either side of their unsteady commander. "Cleared for light duty – patrols only."

"Agreed." Prowl's acknowledgement and Prime's overlapped, both firm and a little relieved.

Sideswipe's expression shifted from surprise to confusion to irritation, his vocalisor whirring as he struggled to find something to say. Ratchet cycled his optics at the red-clad warrior.

"Prowl's a slagging idiot but he's got a point. The two of you have more energy and move faster than half the garrison. It's about time you earned your pay."

"Only patrols?" Sunstreaker asked, voice and optics sharp. "Not combat duty?"

Ironhide's snort drowned any comment from the medic.

"Until you get a grip on that fragging twin-bond, you're not going anywhere near a battlefield. You'd both be cannon-fodder, the minute one of you was distracted."

Prime and Ratchet nodded, their amusement plain as both twins looked startled to hear the verdict put so bluntly.

"Agreed," Prowl repeated, and this time the crackle in his vocalisor was obvious to all around him. He sipped again at the cube, and inclined his helm, first to Prime and then to Lennox. "If you will excuse me, I believe I should rest."

"Go," Optimus told him in a soft tone. Nodding, Prowl turned, weary but satisfied as he heard his Prime go on behind him. "Sunstreaker, Sideswipe, report to Ironhide for assignment." Optimus paused, his tone glad. "Welcome back."


End file.
